Planning every move is now part of life - failure to do so is like playing with fire

It seems that every small activity we undertake now and into the future will be accompanied by risk-management assessment forms and health checks. Welcome to the brave new world where if you want to do something you're going to have to fill out some forms.

Like it or not, this new layer of bureaucracy is with us to stay. With no vaccination in sight and fears that a rise in cases will push us back into territory we thought we'd safely come through, Covid-19 is likely to be part and parcel of our lives long into the future.

Suddenly it feels like we're running mini corporations where risk management, potential for Covid exposure and risk mitigation have become part of the fabric of daily life. We might not be using this business speak to describe how we're running our lives but that's what we're doing.

When I spoke to a mother-of-two running her own management consultant business, she told me she didn't know of any family not running their own daily risk-management strategy. They're just not calling it that. Lisa-Nicole Dunne runs Mantra Consulting in Swords and with two children, one of whom is autistic, she knows that if there's any changes to the way schools open in September she's going to need a business continuity plan to keep the show on the road.

I thought about what she'd said and while I'd never thought about it in those terms, it's exactly what we're all doing now - making decisions based on risk. When I arranged to meet a friend during the week, we drove our own cars to the trail head where we were planning to hike. The old habit of sharing a car was out the window - we felt it was safer to travel alone. Simple risk mitigation.

And now that many camps, restaurants and activities are open again, how do we decide if it's too soon to re-engage? This is what I have started calling the 'murky' time. It was clear-cut when everything was closed and we were staying close to home and confining ourselves to our family circle. Now the waters are muddied. There's ambiguity about what's OK.

Even within families there's disagreements about what's an acceptable level of risk. Is the playdate okay as long as everyone stays outside? Are the kids still supposed to sit in the car when you do the supermarket shop or can they come in if they wear masks? Do we tell friends that the gathering they're suggesting is not something we're comfortable with?

I don't like to think of myself as a business but perhaps thinking in terms of 'Me Limited' will force us to keep remembering - even as we experience Covid fatigue - that we're future-proofing our lives. If companies mess up the guidelines, they pay the price and get sued. If we mess up, we put our own health, our family's health and that of other people at risk.

Businesses prepare for scenarios: best- and worse-case. It's a strategy families need to do more of, according to business consultant Naomi Doyle of Huskador Consulting, based in Dublin. Many of us have already had the conversation about what will happen if one partner gets Covid-19 and has to self-isolate. Others have negotiated with siblings about the future of elderly parents if they get sick.

Ms Doyle believes the only way for us as human beings to navigate our way through this next murky stage is to plan, make a decision, and execute it. Exploring your options about everyday tasks is key, she believes, to not getting stuck or feeling a sense of inertia.

She uses the analogy of driving a car. If you keep looking in the rearview mirror, you'll crash. Best to take a glance in the rearview mirror but keep your eyes focused on the road ahead. Businesses, she says, make a decision and move forward. They make calls about staffing and the different scenarios that might affect their bottom line every day.

Creating different scenarios of what might play out in our lives will take the fear out of what we are dealing with, she believes. It will also reinforce the fact that we have choices. And if things don't go to plan afterwards you can tell yourself, 'I reasoned this through - it's as good a decision as I could have made under the circumstances'.

Acceptance of where we're at must also play a huge part in moving forward. Life as we knew it, including our carefully choreographed routines as we segued between school drop-offs and the office, navigating workplace politics and social gatherings, no longer exists. A key part of how we go forward must be accepting reality. Applying these strategies to our lives will help us mitigate the risks and live with the harsh reality that Covid-19 is with us for the long term.

These are uncertain times. We might think we're no good at change and yet we do it every single day. There is no crystal ball. There is no blueprint or guidebook for what comes next.

The tools that will help us reshape our lives are not scary. They might be couched in the language of the boardroom. But when you break it down it comes down to this: make a plan and then keep moving forward. It's all we can do.