Isolation Disruption Creates Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity

Isolation Disruption Creates Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity

The COVID – 19 coronavirus outbreaks have led to a disruption in our normal life. While this disruption creates significant stress, it also creates personal and professional development opportunities to learn, write, teach, and connect with others.

There is a lot of uncertainty as to when the situation will become normal again. The adjustment to a new working routine will be troublesome initially. The isolation period is affecting everybody, with no face-to-face interaction that we used to do in the office, lunch hours, and coffee breaks.

The key to survive this is to enjoy the work along with the flexibility we get, and it will be easier to adjust to working from home.

The primary step in redefining how we want to spend our day in a work from home environment is to create a personal strategic plan. This plan can help the individuals check their daily lists of tasks and will help them in making a room for extra initiatives thereby defining clearly what needs to be done on priority basis.

The Component of our personal action plan are like a business plan and include:

  • Clarify Your Values. What values and virtues do you most admire and wish to practice going forward?
  • Create a Mission Statement. A description of who you want to be and what you want to do in the future, leveraging your personal skills and strengths
  • Perform a Skills and Strengths Audit. What do you like doing the most and what are you best at that other people will value?
  • Determine Area of Excellence. What will you do to achieve results that are far beyond what the average person could be expected to accomplish?

During times of isolation, a personal strategic plan can bring a sense of control back to our life. It can help us to be proactive in achieving our goals and will serve as a guide for our daily routine.

Having a personal development plan will help offset some of these challenges like tendency to wake up later than normal, spending too much time around the refrigerator and finding excuses not to focus on the things that made you happy in the past (working out, socializing, spending time with your family, etc.).


Amanjot Kaur
Research Associate, Athena Executive Search & Consulting