Seeing how people around us react to spending more time indoors has been fascinating...and enlightening

I have been thinking about the importance of individual action over the last couple of weeks.

The most obvious individual actions are the ones we’re all taking; the ones to keep ourselves and everyone else safe – washing our hands, keeping 2m apart and staying at home, aside from exercise and essential work.

Those all work towards a greater good; the more we obey the rules, the faster we can poke our heads back into normal life.

But you knew that. So that’s the first kind of individual action I’ve been thinking about.

How we all do our small bit to keep the world turning as best we can in the current situation.

Another kind of individual action I’ve been thinking about is how different people respond to having more free time.

You and I both know that sometimes lockdown alone is enough to deal with, let alone trying to cram in a million new skills.

But we can’t deny we have a unique chance to get better at, well, anything we like, aside from maybe surfing and anything that requires travel or an industrial oven.

Seeing how the people around us react to spending more time indoors is an interesting indicator of character.

Are they pushing to learn more; are they attempting new things? Or are they complaining from their waking moment until the time they go to bed?

And look, “getting better” needn’t evoke the typical scene of the stuffed Self-Improvement shelf in Waterstones.

It doesn’t have to be a specific skill or a measurable achievement. It’s more about self-expansion than it is improvement.

It’s a time to nurture niggling interests or delve into a new world. Maybe you’ve always wanted to make bread, or watch the best crime films ever made.

Maybe you once ran a half marathon, but haven’t run in years since.

Maybe you’ve been meaning to read Jordan Peterson’s ‘12 Rules for Life’ to see what all the fuss is about.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to watch every David Attenborough documentary.

When you look back at lockdown, you’ll either have a tale of drudgery and misery, or one of self-development.

You’ll either talk about how it was the most exhaustive time in your life, or a humorous tale about how you got into bread making and filled up the freezer with a year’s worth of rolls.

And hey, it can have elements of both.

Nobody is immune to lockdown despair. Just make sure that the basic lockdown rules aren’t the only individual actions you’re taking.

Because setting yourself these micro-challenges, seeing what you can achieve on the days you’re up to it, these are all for the greater good too.

Coming out of lockdown a better person than before will only benefit you and the people around you.

And when everyone talks about what they did in lockdown, your response will indicate your character.

So even when it feels like everything in your world is out of your control, you get to decide what kind of lockdown story you come out with.

So fill this time with doing things that expand who you are. And if the people around you are writing their lockdown story with misery and despair, remember that their story isn’t yours and you can come out of this with more knowledge, skills or, at the very least, a lot more bread.