Life before lockdown vs. life after lockdown. Are you desperate to go back to your old daily patterns, or are you embracing new changes in your life?

Stay-at-home orders have eased. Our Old Lives are eagerly beckoning for us to rejoin them.

What next?

Don’t go. Grow forward.

Let’s not return to our old ways. Let’s move forward with a new script for life after lockdown.

We can probably all agree that not even the best of New Year’s resolutions could have inspired the massive changes that we have all made in 2020.

Yes, the cause of this unsolicited lifestyle overhaul has been a dark one, but now is the opportune moment to shine a light on the path forward.

Let’s turn our attention to the prospect of further Growth, contemplating where we are now vs. where we were six months ago, and most importantly, focusing on where we can be in six months.

We must continue to evolve.

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Step 1: Make the Commitment

Over the course of the stay-at-home order, we have shifted daily routines, lifestyle habits and very importantly, our perspectives on both personal and work-related matters.

While the circumstances prompting those life changes were completely out of our control, we can certainly steer where we take things from here.

The new challenge becomes identifying and continuing the momentum on positive changes. We must keep building on these newly laid foundations.

Step 2: Plan for Sustainable Growth

In terms of navigating the next steps, one reliable approach involves taking a page out of the Project Management book.

In project management, there is an exercise undertaken at the conclusion of the project called a retrospective. The group comes together to reflect on the project and takes a good hard look at success and failures, with a simple goal in mind: continuous improvement.

As we look ahead to resuming activity in a post-pandemic climate, it is important that we each assign time to conduct our own retrospective exercise – as individuals, as leaders, as team players.

It would be remiss not to take the learnings from this experience seriously.

Personally, we are learning new things about ourselves, our families and our friends.

Professionally, we are making discoveries about our products and our teams in extraordinarily new ways.

Step 3: The Retrospective Exercise

If carried out effectively, this retrospective exercise will lead to improved product processes, to the positive development of team performance and morale, and to to the overall growth of individuals in both a personal and professional capacity.