how to cope with isolation & staying at home

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Yesterday we discussed ten ways to be more productive and feel more motivated while working from home. But despite any increase in your productivity levels during your working hours you may feel stuck and lacking the inspiration to do anything else besides sleeping and working.

Adapting to a life at home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can be hard in the beginning, especially if you live in an apartment and have very limited access to the outdoors.

I think that one of the best ways to cope with this new reality is allowing yourself to adapt to a new routine but without changing the old one too much. Your life has key components that need to be fulfilled, even if you’re not allowed to go outside. Exercising, socialising, eating healthy, learning new things and having a healthy sleep schedule are all parts of a healthy lifestyle that you can still pursue and mimic at home.

Being stuck at home means that your planning skills need to be the best they ever were. You may be dealing with a major lack of supplies, delayed deliveries of food and medicine or other goods. If you have a business, you may be losing clients so your finances need to reorganised accordingly. Furthermore, some your plans may have been cancelled - I had to postpone my wedding so that means a LOT of planning and reorganising to be done in a very short amount of time. Maybe you have a list of people you need to call ASAP, classes and appointments to cancel, things to reschedule and supplies to order. If you still haven’t gotten a planner, a bullet journal or an app that has the same purpose, now is the time to get it and use it.

So to make life a little bit less hectic, make a list of 1) people you have to call, 2) supplies you need to get delivered and 3) things you need to cancel or postpone.

And you can only cope with being stuck at home if you’re taking care of yourself.

People have different exercise needs but stopping your old workout routine is worse than adapting it to the limited space in your house. Stretching, doing yoga or a low impact fitness workout on a mat or, for those who can handle it, following a HIIT class online are all things that can be done with very limited space and will grant at least some level of activity, especially if you do it daily.

Technology allows you to call and message your friends and family, as well as video chatting with them or playing videogames online. You can create new routines based on these new limitations. You can buddy read a couple of books and share ideas with a close friend or even take a class online with someone.

Also, I can’t stress enough that this is the time to take care of your home. Open the windows, do your laundry, declutter your space, scrub the floors. You’ll be spending so much time in the same place so make sure it’s clean and you’ll feel so much better about being stuck home.

And the lack of supplies in your area will force you to be more creative in the kitchen. You can use this time to get out of your comfort zone and try new things. Maybe you don’t have access to fresh bread every day like you used to but you can use some flour, yeast and water to bake your own bread. You can mix ingredients you’ve never tried before, make your own snacks, cookies and cakes from scratch and even take the time to take a look at your pantry and reorganise it.

But even if you are able to stay healthy and keep your home and your family healthy, staying behind closed doors for too long will probably feel boring and tedious after the first couple of days.

You can get entertained with endless video subscriptions, video games that you can purchase online, documentaries and tv shows, podcasts and live music shows. You can order books from amazon and start tackling that to-read list that you have been putting off for five years. You can start personal projects that you never had the time to pursue before, like writing a book, starting a business, learning a major skill or planning to redecorate your house when all of this is over. There are almost unlimited things you can do at home and that will maybe even help the people around you.

FTC: This video is sponsored by Dashlane.