Productivity and Coronavirus: Lockdown has shown me that I’m lazy

A currently unreleased vlog from my trip to Tokyo in August last year. Another thing I haven’t got around to doing.

Last summer I had a long-term girlfriend, a full-time job and I was doing bits and pieces to contribute to my online presence.

It might sound slightly impressive on the surface that I was doing anything at all when you consider I was working in Liverpool, spending three or four nights a week at home, spending two or three nights a week at my girlfriend’s in Manchester (usually a 90-minute drive between the two each way in the week under normal traffic conditions) – and that was when I was even in the country.

I also visited 18 countries across four continents in 2019, taking 32 flights in the process, and while travel is my passion, it can be a tiring pursuit.

Watching Boca Juniors play in Buenos Aires with my (now ex-) girlfriend was one of the travel highlights of 2019.

Since mid-2017 (at an estimate), the effort I’ve put into my blog, and everything connected to it, has fallen far short of what I have envisioned in my mind – save for a spurt in 2018 when I launched the Travelling Tom Podcast with my friend James.

That took quite the effort on my part, especially as I paid for and collated all the equipment, which took up two large holdalls and a rucksack, brought it from home to MediaCity for each episode, lugged it from my car to my university building where our studio was located, then set it up and packed it away.

The first episode of the Travelling Tom Podcast.

We kept it going throughout the summer of 2018, but I didn’t sustain it, and while over the first couple of years I did pretty well with my blog, working with brands and travel companies such as Lonely Planet, Hamburg Tourismus, Gray Line Iceland, Crystal Ski, Ibis and Expedia, I’ve pretty much fallen off-track over the last 18 months.

Over that time I’ve often thought if I didn’t have a girlfriend, or even worked part-time that I’d be firing on all cylinders when it came to Travelling Tom. Less responsibilities and less commitment, in my mind, would equal more time and opportunity to create content, to improve my website, to strategise and post more on social media and allow me to start cranking out travel-related video across various platforms, but mainly YouTube.

So, when 2020 rolled around, it obviously decided to put that theory to the test. The year started off with my girlfriend and I breaking up, then continued to go downhill with Coronavirus flaring up in the UK and the country – alongside much of the world – going into lockdown.

As someone who works in the aviation industry, COVID-19 quickly took hold of our working lives, and with flights being cancelled left, right and centre, the future of my career suddenly became uncertain.

Launching a new airline and route at work just before lockdown began.

Everyone at work was soon subject to either a pay cut or a reduced working week, or redundancy. Fortunately, I was in the bracket of the former and was told that I would be put on 50% of my hours for the foreseeable from the start of April.

This quickly changed when the UK Government’s Job Retention Scheme was announced, and then I was put on furlough. I wouldn’t be allowed to work while I was part of the scheme, but I would get 80% of my salary.

No girlfriend and no work? Now it’s time to get started.

Except it wasn’t. This free time I used to wonder about was now here. I was living in it. I had all day, every day to work on my blog, social media, freelance, video and whatever else I’d had planned for so long, but never got around to doing.

From 1 April 2020, until further notice, I quite literally had all the time in the world to work on my passion… and yet, I didn’t. I spent much of April doing one blog post a week (I’ve posted at least one blog post a week since I started this website in November 2015, which is a minimum level of consistency I cling to), and interspersed that with reading and, other than playing a lot of PlayStation and doing a bit of exercise, little else.

Across the whole of last month I had the opportunity to turn things around on here and I didn’t take it, but as May loomed I vowed not to make the same mistake again.

We’re now at the halfway point of this year’s fifth month and already it has been more productive than the last, and as I look back over the last six weeks – the first six weeks of furlough – it becomes clear that my problem was never having a partner, travelling a lot or even a full-time job. It was, simply, laziness.

In 2018 I went on a blogging retreat to Krakow. I planned a lot, but have since done little.

I’ve had hours and hours of free time over the past few years to get better, to improve, to do more and, simply put, I haven’t. I’ve no-one to blame but myself for that.

And while it is frustrating and disappointing to have let myself down in that way, it’s a positive thing that I’ve been able to see where I have failed and why.

I know that I can make Travelling Tom a success, but what it takes in order to be successful is making the most of those down moments. Choosing a keyboard and mouse over a video game controller, consistently posting content through various channels, trying new things, analysing where I’m going wrong and fixing those issues, learning new skills and continually improving by doing and – maybe most importantly – seeking enjoyment in the process.

I’m yet to reach anywhere near 100% productivity. I think throughout May I’ve probably hit 40%. Maybe next month I’ll ramp it up a notch, or maybe I won’t.

The last video I uploaded to my YouTube channel was this podcast 10 months ago.

At the start of last year, I wrote an update where I reflected on 2018 and previewed the year ahead. My intentions were good. I spoke about my health and wanting to get healthier, I stated my desire to revamp my website and make the big move from Squarespace to WordPress, made a statement on chronicling my travels through my Instagram and spoke about re-launching the podcast and my YouTube channel.

With the exception of a couple of podcasts shot in my bedroom and a few Instagram posts here and there, I failed to produce anything of real quality or value, and I certainly didn’t deliver my 2019 vision. It looks as though I never even tried.

There’s no mental health excuse I need to hide behind, nor any life events which pulled my focus away from my plans. I can’t even cite lack of creativity, because I actually have so many great ideas – I really do.

What I have lacked over the past couple of years is execution. It’s all well and good talking the talk, but in order to be successful – to use the cliché –  you need to be able to walk the walk.

I’d like to think this realisation would be the kick up the backside I need to make something out of all of this whilst the window of opportunity is still open. And while I know what it takes to get there – can I overcome laziness and actually do it? The proof will certainly be in the pudding.