A couple months back, while I was still planning my two-month trip to Bali and New Zealand, I would have never imagined we would all be in the situation we are currently facing world-wide.
I mean, who would?
I had plans. I’m sure you did too. I thought at this point in time I would be road tripping somewhere around the South Island hiking up mountains or kayaking my way through beautiful lakes. But I guess COVID-19 had different plans for all of us.
So instead, I am currently quarantining at home. I guess (and I hope) you are too.
With this whole pandemic mayhem, we have all been forced to stay home, change habits, adapt, slow down, and reflect. In other words, we’ve all had to limit our lives to a certain extent. Thankfully, most of us can still learn, work, sweat, bend, move and have fun from the comfort of our homes, can’t we?
However, if you’re the type of person that prefers to stick to an ongoing “Netflix and chill” agenda, that’s absolutely fine as well. But let’s face it, there are only so many TV shows and movies we can watch before we begin to go a little crazy, and who knows how long this might last for…?
So if your confinement life is starting to look a little bit like the Groundhog Day and you feel you’re living the same 24 hours day after day here’s 5 quarantine routines that I’ve been experimenting with in order to keep myself active and entertained. I’m sharing them with you because they bring something positive into my day and they help me go to bed feeling I have accomplished something, so you might find them of value too.
[Number 3 and number 5 have been my favorite so far!]
1. ONE RECIPE A DAY.
Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I’m absolutely useless in the kitchen. I’ve been living on my own for some time now so you could say I know enough to feed myself with the basics and not burn down the kitchen, but that’s about it.
So I thought, what a better time to learn how to properly cook than now? [Like, really cook – turns out adding ingredients to instant ramen noodles doesn’t really count as cooking].
I am currently in New Zealand isolating together with another five people. Each day, one of the couples is on cooking duty and does its best to delight the rest with their chosen meal. I’m talking restaurant-like beautiful delicious dishes here. For someone like me who usually has a salad and a French omelette for dinner, the level in this household is preeeeetty high, so I’ve had some serious catching up to do.
Nevertheless, after a couple weeks I already feel confident enough to try some of these new recipes on my own once I get back home, but most importantly, cooking (which I previously had no interest in) has started to grow on me. I’ve actually started to enjoy not only the satisfaction of tasting my own food, but also just the process of making it.
So instead of calling for food delivery next time, why don’t you put on some music, take out a cooking book (or even better, that hand-written recipe book that passes from one generation to another) and give it a try yourself? Get a cooking partner to make it more fun or do it just by yourself and see how relaxing spending some solo time in the kitchen can be.
I’ve linked some of my favourite recipes below in case you want to start with something easy but equally delicious! [If even I could make these, you can master them.]
- Carrot Cake
- Blueberry Lemon Cake (with lemon glaze)
- Beef Teriyaki Stir Fry
Not so much into cooking or already a master chef? Just change cooking for any other skill you’d like to pick up. It can be anything. Pick up a language or that dusty guitar in your room and learn a few chords, for example. Just stick to something and see how much you can improve by the time we get out of this quarantine!
2. LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
Henry ford
Pick a time of the day to stimulate your brain and learn something new.
When we experience something new, the “novelty center” of our brain is activated and we get a rush of dopamine (our brain’s happy chemicals) which motivates us to follow through with the new thing.
Before this whole coronavirus mess blew up, I used to keep a list where I’d write down different subjects I wanted to be more educated in. If a certain topic or matter popped up at work, in casual conversation, TV, or online and poked my curiosity, I would write it down on the list with the aim of doing some research about it later and learning more about the matter. After all, we’ve got so much information at the tip of our fingers nowadays that there’s not many excuses for not being able to quench our curiosity.
Except maybe… lack of time. Somehow, I was always “too busy” doing something else and the list just kept getting longer a longer. But if there’s one thing we all have abundantly now it’s exactly that: time.
So why not use it to learn something new?
Establish a time of the day where you can commit to educating yourself in different topics you’ve always been curious about. Watch a documentary, read a book, listen to a podcast or radio program, do an online course or read online articles… there’s infinite options.
Here’s a few suggestions and resources to get you inspired:
Documentaries:
- The architecture of peace [Netflix]
- The true cost
BBC and National geographic also have some pretty spectacular documentaries, but if you don’t want to commit so much of your time, I’d also recommend more digestible formats such as IGTV informative video series from accounts like the Washington Post (@washingtonpost), The guardian (@guardian) or The New York Times (@nytimes) that won’t take you more than 5-10 minutes and which you can easily watch from the comfort of your bed.
You’ll never go to sleep again without learning something new!
Podcasts:
These are some of the ones I’ve been listening to recently that I’d reccommend:
If you’re into digital marketing and want to level up some of your business-related skills, or you enjoy listening to some thoughtful analysis of the times and current issues in which we live in, I think you’ll find them pretty interesting.
But of course, your area of interest might be a completely different one, in which case you only have to ask google for “the best [area of interest] podcasts” and you’ll get a nice list of recommended podcasts to start off with. Listen to them while having breakfast, while doing your workout or even in the shower. Learning from industry experts and gaining new knowledge has never been as easy!
Good reads:
Subscribe to an online magazine that covers the topics that fascinate you or find yourself some blogs that inspire you and start following them. In case you’re lost for ideas, I’m a devout reader of The Blog of Darius Foroux, which I discovered some time ago through Medium.
I personally love medium.com as a platform because when you create your account you get to pick the topics that you are most interested in so that they can send you a daily digest in your inbox with articles that are appealing to you depending on your chosen preferences. That way, when I wake up I always have a small selection of articles that I’m interested to read waiting in my inbox.
As you can see the resources are really unlimited, you just have to choose your favourite ones and watch how those happy chemicals start kicking in!
And now that you’ve stimulated your mind, what about your body?
3. MORNING YOGA PRACTICE.
Without a doubt, freedom of movement has been one of the things to be most compromised during this quarantine. However, nothing really stops us from moving within these boundaries. People around the world have found the most creative ways to work-out at home and stay active.
The world has quickly realized that our bodies without movement, are just machines in deterioration. That in order to stay healthy, not only physically but also mentally, we must find a way to keep moving.
In order to do so, I’ve chosen to stick to a short morning yoga practice, but you can choose whatever feels best for your body, whether that’s a little dance session, virtual workout (I’ve just recently discovered @whitneysimmons IGTV workouts for the evenings and I don’t think I’m ever going back to a gym again), stretching, or simply walking around the house and adding steps to your Fitbit!
The reason I like my morning yoga practice so much though, is that it’s easy to commit to. It’s a nice relaxing way to start the day and wake up the body through gentle and delicate movement. It helps me get rid of the stiffness and neck pain that I usually wake up with every morning and it gives me time to think about where my mind’s at, as I try to consciously approach the day in a positive way. Meaning, I’ve set this designated moment of the day where I actively choose to start the day with the right attitude. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it certainly helps.
If this sounds like something you’d also benefit from, here’s the link to the 20 minute vinyasa flow I go through every morning. I discovered it through @sjanaelise, who I’ve been following for some time now. I like to keep it short because my aim is no other than to stretch and warm up my body while I get in tune with my morning mood, but if you’re looking for longer, more in-depth practices, you can also find those here.
4. WORK ON A CREATIVE PROJECT.
Now that we’ve got your mind and body covered, what about that creative soul of yours? Have you been paying much attention to it lately?
These days I’ve come to realize that, while having my main focus at work and former daily routine, I had been leaving some of my creative projects and hobbies behind.
Now, while being “stuck” in quarantine, I’ve found a great opportunity to pick some of them back up and it feels grrrrreat.
So I invite you to take this time to go back to your writing, to your music, to your DIY home décor projects, to your knitting, to your painting…to whatever it is that you love doing. Explore your creative side and bring it out to play!
If you’re not the artsy type but still want to take a shot at creating something today, check out some of these different DYI ideas,
… you might discover you’ve been holding back some hidden talents!
5. JOURNALING: KEEP A QUARANTINE TRACKER.
This has definitely become one of my favorite practices within my quarantine routine.
I’ve been a journaling junkie for a long time now (in case “thepocketjournal.com” hadn’t given me away already), and I’ve experimented with different journaling methods through the years. In fact, I can’t remember a time of my life where I haven’t kept some sort of journal.
I could probably write volumes about why I think daily journaling is such a good practice, but the main reason I started my “quarantine diaries” is because I want to be able to read through its pages in the future and use it as a time machine that can take me back to this unique and transcendental moment in life we are all experiencing.
Reading through my old journals helps me have more vivid memories of specific and meaningful times in my life and understand better what I was like, what my thoughts and vision of the world were, what I was dealing with, and how I have evolved. Essentially, I find this practice to be a great source into gaining self-awareness and to identify repeating patterns that I can work on.
So I decided to start my “quarantine diaries” as a specific journal for this quarantine period where I track
- the activities and accomplishments of the day,
- daily gratitudes, cues or realizations,
- plans or to-do’s for the following days,
- dreams or ideas that come to mind,
- and how I’ve felt overall each day in a score from one to five.
Of course, you are more than welcome to write about whatever you like, but if you’re lost for ideas, below you can see how a random page out of my quarantine journal looks like:
I find that it’s easier to stick to the journaling practice when the day’s log is divided into different sections as opposed to just facing a blank page every day. However, dumping thoughts in a blank page with no restrictions nor specific direction can help in many other different ways, so it’s up to you to find the method that you think will be the easiest to keep up with as a habit and that you’ll benefit from the most.
I invite you to use these peculiar and unusual times to externalize that magnificent internal world of feelings and ideas you’ve got inside you and give journaling a try. Maybe you’ll notice yourself reflecting on your life and how you are living it, maybe you’ll find yourself reconsidering what’s most important to you or identifying habits or patterns you don’t’ want to go back to. Whatever it is that you become aware of, I’m sure you’ll learn something from it.
No better time than now to look inside and get to know ourselves better. See what works for us, what doesn’t, and what we’d like to change in order to improve our lives when we get back to normal and all of this is over.
So there you have it, 5 routine ideas for you to mix up your daily routine during quarantine!
This is just a general guide for myself that I like to follow in order to have some structure and sense of control in my day, but what works for me doesn’t necessarily have to work for you. You can choose to include all of them in your routine or just pick a few, but above all, aim for balance. Allow yourself to be flexible and don’t pressure yourself to complete everything. These are also times of snacking, oversleeping, and tv binge-watching and we should also be able to celebrate those!
What about you? How do your quarantine days look like so far? Got any other quarantine activity ideas to share? I would love to read about them in the comments, let’s see what you guys are up to these days!
TAGS:daily routinelifestylequarantineself-careself-improvement