What did you achieve on lockdown

I'm already dreading that question. Half of what you see amounts to, "learn a language or an instrument on lockdown or you failed" the other half amounts to "seriously, have you seen my life?".

They're all wrong. You ought to be trying to achieve a dozen small things, not a single big one. improve your life, don't overhaul it.

We have moved over from yeast bread to sourdough, rearranged our pot garden, shifted some pictures around and changed the furniture in the children's room. It's not much, but every marginal gain you can make improves your life.

And there's more time in the day to sit in the garden, talk to our neighbours and watch the bird life that has flourished in the silence. I read as much as I want to a lot more of the time. There is plenty of opportunity to stare out of the window and get lost in thought.

There's a pervasive belief in achievement as leisure, but that's a false god to worship. I'm reading Zena Hitz right now (more to come) who uses the Aristotelian notion of happiness, and the distinction between ends in themselves and means to an end, to discuss contemplation as the basis of happiness. Most of the people I know who are unhappy (and don't realise it) have no idea what that distinction means, practically speaking.

Too much of the modern adoption of ancient philosophy, such as the new Stoic movement, is about repositioning philosophy as a tool to make you high achieving rather than a way of introducing people to the thinking about how to live.

For many of us, the best thing we can do with our lockdown time is to sit quietly, watch things carefully we would not usually watch, and turn off the news. Read Seneca. Or the Psalms. Watch your plants grow.

Maybe the best achievement you can make is not an achievement at all.