8 ways to recharge during this time out from life
As a fourth year undergraduate student, my studies have come to an abrupt halt as the repercussions of COVID-19 ripple throughout the globe. After spending a few days trying to sort out how to approach the blank two months just dropped into my lap, I realized it wasn’t long ago that my friends and I were looking forward to our next break rolling around. First it was winter break, then reading week and soon enough we’d be craving the first few days of summer, indicating we were inching closer to yet another coveted ‘time-out’ from life (this sensation dampened slightly as we we savoured our last few weeks of college/university).
While much of the reason we look forward to these breaks is to hang out with friends, frolic outside or go on a warm vacation — we are also catering to a much deeper underlying need: the need to recharge.
We’re used to hearing the phrase “where did the time go? This week/month/year flew by!”, but what we don’t realize is that these periods fly by because they’re full of busyness, chaos, and energy expenditure. And when we arrive at that coveted time-out period — our next break — we can’t wait to rest our head on that pillow and give ourselves a few days to bring our battery back up to 100%.
As it turns out, we got a break a little earlier than we expected — and a much longer one with much stricter rules than anything we’re used to. It’s obvious why this can be perceived negatively. However, I’d like to point out a few ways this perception can be flipped. Here are 8 ways we can use this period to recharge, prepare for when society’s doors open again, and maybe even do our future self a few favours in the process.
1. Treat isolation like a mini meditation retreat
I was recently listening to a podcast where s meditation teacher Jack Kornfield said something really profound about the world going into social isolation:
“People pay thousands of dollars to go on meditation retreats — to escape their every-day lives, hide out in a house, not talk to anyone, and sit alone with their thoughts — and we’ve all just been granted one for free! Use it.”
This really made me think about why we dread time alone so much. When you look at it objectively, it really is a great time to reflect on what’s been happening in our lives and generally just check in with ourselves. And yet, as soon as we’re granted the time and space to do this, our instinct is to pick up our phones or turn on Netflix and allow our minds to bathe in nothingness instead.
It’s important to actively carve out time during this isolation to sit with our thoughts and clear out the mental clutter which has built up over the last little while. After all, we’ve been granted a free meditation retreat, so we might as well use it (to also help us keep our cool with whomever we’re locked up with for the next few weeks.)
2. Make 2 isolation to-do lists: need-to-do & want-to-do
This is something I did yesterday which I found super helpful — sit down with a pen and paper, or your computer and write out 2 lists:
Need-to-do in isolation: This can be anything you are genuinely responsible for producing while in isolation — think: school work, work from home deliverables, taking care of your kids/parents, paying bills, etc.
Want-to-do in isolation:
Here’s where the creativity kicks in. Ask yourself:
What are the things I’ve been wanting to do, but feel like I never have time for?
List everything that comes to mind.
Some examples: read a fiction book, start a blog, start a podcast, write a medium article, meditate, do yoga, volunteer (you can volunteer to call elderly people in your community to see if they need supplies if you don’t want to leave your house!), journal, paint, organize your computer, make a work-out plan, etc.
Once you’ve made these two lists, prioritize them. Literally number the things you wrote down on each list in order of their importance to you. This should be the same order you do them in. Some projects will obviously be longer-term (like starting a side project), while others might be a one-time experiment (like painting or writing an article). Expect to allocate time to these things accordingly.
Writing them down is the first step to putting them into action. Working on a side project or hobbie can give you a sense of purpose when you get up in the morning, and demonstrates that there’s plenty of fulfilling ways to spend our time in isolation which are not wasteful at all.
3. Make a Work From Home schedule
“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali
To avoid winding up at the end of this with a blur of undistinguishable days to look back on, making a daily schedule is key. Even a brief, bullet point, skeleton of a schedule will do so much to keep you on track and accountable.
Have a time you wake up every day. Have a time you go to sleep. That alone will do wonders for what you can accomplish each day. Beyond that — set out to achieve one thing every day, which, if you achieved it, would make that day feel productive (for me, it was writing this article). Call it your Most Important Thing — your MIT. And write it out each night before you go to bed or right when you wake up so you can work on it before you start any of those other pesky tasks which get in the way of the big stuff.
If you’re not a fan of those day-planned-to-the-half-hour-Type-A schedules, try breaking down your day like this: wake up, exercise, breakfast, task block #1, lunch, task block #2, break, virtual social interaction, dinner, chill, sleep.
If you want to see a more granular example, check out this one, originally posted by Hannah Bronfman.
Doing this will help us take on everything on our two isolation to-do lists. Having some structure to stick to will help keep us on track without the social accountability of our typical work-places. Try it and iterate on it for a few days to see how it goes.
4. Make a list of gratitudes
In a time like this, it might be the last thing you want to do, but making a list of things you’re grateful for (or just a list of small things that make you happy) can help a lot with lifting the spirits! It can be anything from something you’re grateful to have experienced in the last few months, to the small luxuries you have in isolation which others might not.
I have been using the Five Minute Journal on and off for the last few years which has you write down three things you’re grateful for, first thing in the morning. This is an excellent way to create this list in small chunks if you don’t feel like doing it all at once.
If you’re feeling a little down that a trip got cancelled, or school ended early or you can’t see your friends or family (all valid reasons to be upset), try exercising gratitude that we had those things in the first place. If the worst thing that happens to you from this global pandemic is that a few things you were looking forward to have been cancelled or postponed, but nothing you have in the present (like your health or that of a loved one) is taken away — then you are very lucky.
“A healthy man wants 1000 things. A sick man wants only one thing.” — Naval Ravikant
5. Write a 10 year essay
Write out what an ideal day in your life in 10 years would look like, start-to-finish, in excruciating detail. I first heard about this idea in a Tim Ferriss podcast episode with Debbie Millman, where she explained that she has all of her students write their 10 year essay and read it every year. You describe everything — from the house you wake up in, to what you’d be doing, to where you are living, to everything else you’d want in your life in 10 years.
This is an exercise I did in my first year of university — it took two nights of writing and editing, but at the end of it, I had written a fairly long essay of what I wanted a day in my life in 10 years to look like. I read it every year and it is remarkable how much of it still rings true, how certain aspirations have evolved, and how some things have already begun to materialize. Debbie has been teaching this for 10+ years and frequently has students come back to her explaining that much of what they had written in their essays has now happened in their lives.
If this exercise freaks you out, try thinking 1 year, 2 years or 5 years out — and ask yourself what you want life to look like then. You don’t need to have an answer immediately (you probably won’t unless you’ve thought about this before), but just sit with it. Maybe you’ll have some ideas in a few days. We’ve got plenty of thinking time on our hands, so I’m sure you’ll come up with something! It’s an interesting exercise and forces you to genuinely visualize what you want the future to look like.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.” — Yogi Berra
6. Get outside
The Japanese have a phrase for the perks of going out in nature: shinrin yoku, which translates to forest bathing. There is something about getting in nature which is truly like a warm bath for the mind. Everything else falls away and it’s so easy to be present, because we automatically get lost in what’s around us.
Any form of fresh air feels good right now, especially because our typical commutes have been axed and the only reason we have to go outside is to walk our dogs or to take out the trash. So, we have to make it a daily priority to breathe in those precious gulps of fresh air and get ourselves moving outside.
I saw a man riding a bicycle today, with two toddlers in a stroller attached like a trailer to the back of his bike — it was pretty heart-warming. If he can get out there with his two little kids on a ride around the neighbourhood, we can put on some sneakers and spend 20 minutes calling a friend as we walk around the block, or go for a morning run, or walk with an isolation buddy to a nearby park to wander around.
Don’t let nature fall out of your routine — if anything, it’s a time to make it more of a priority than before.
7. Pick a new skill and learn it
If this didn’t make your want-to-do in isolation list, make a special addition. Casual learning can be very therapeutic — hence the knitting phase I went through in 8th grade. There must be something you’ve always wanted to learn: a new language, coding, illustrating, public speaking (there’s never been a safer place to practice!), writing, etc. There are plenty of resources online — but YouTube is probably your best bet (maybe DuoLingo if we’re talking languages).
“Youtube is the new university. It’s where people go to learn out of genuinely curiosity.” — Jordan Peterson
Note: If you want to make a real investment, SkillShare or MasterClass are highly recommended as well. I would first experiment on YouTube before making a commitment, though.
8. Compile a go-to content list for your chill time
By no means is this post intended to funnel ‘productivity’ down your throat. While limiting the amount of content we consume each day is important, that doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy some quality entertainment as well.
I stumbled upon an amazing list, how to live your best quarantined life, with some pretty fantastic ideas of how to spend all this free time. I didn’t even bother writing my own suggestion list, because this one truly covers everything.
Pull out your favourites from there, and anything else you’ve been itching to watch/read/listen to and compile it all into one list. If you’re wanting to dive into a few good books, here are 13 great ones I read last year. This way, you can pull from the content you genuinely want to consume instead of passively scrolling through Instagram or getting caught up in Twitter for hours on end accidentally. Intentional content consumption in moderation is the way to go!
Ultimately, there are plenty of ways to take this surprising turn of events as an opportunity to recharge for when a new tsunami of busyness takes over our lives again. All we can do now is be intentional with our time so we don’t get to the end of this and wonder where it all went.
Above all, we should keep those affected by this virus in our thoughts and be grateful every day if all we lose during this time is a few evenings out with our friends, a trip, or anything else replaceable.
Stay safe, stay healthy, wash your hands & lean on this list when times are looking grim!