As I write this from my very own lockdown cell ( I mean home 🙂 ), I’m 3 weeks into complete lockdown in town aside from grocery shopping once a week. I’m settled into working from home and have a pretty good routine going with my partner. Because we both have worked at sea and in remote areas, with not much to do except work and read in our lives, we are fortunate that once settled into a changed routine that works for us we are fine. That’s not the case for everyone though and so I thought i would share my tips for surviving this however long it lasts!

Ill start off by saying getting into a good work routine is key here, ive written about elsewhere in my article, the revalation of home working.

So lockdown, quarantine whatever you want to label it, most of us across the world right now are in some form of government mandated restricted movement, and there is good change that we are either furloughed for this period or working from home.

All at once we have freedom from the commute, more time with the family, and regardless of whether we are working from home or not, we all have more free time in our lives.

The flip side of this of course is that all this new found time and freedom is alien to most of now a days, programmed as we are to always be on, whether that’s for work, social media or other commitments. We are also missing out on a lot of diverse social interaction that being in a physical workplace and going through life, shopping, attending to hobbies etc we experience in everyday life, but which we are missing out on right now.

It’s not all bad news though, we can prevent and avoid the feeling of missing out. For example we connect with friends on WhatsApp or Skype, sit with each other remotely and catch up, gossip have a few beers and keep the social interaction going. The face to face social interaction is what we as humans need, this is just a slight change to way we go about our social interaction, but it still works.

We can do the same things with our colleagues. Missing out on the office humour and lively debate? Simply move it online for the time being.

The free time we have, but cant use outside in the community? Well the good news is that there are lots of other ways to use that. What are the things you’ve wanted to do for a long time but have simply been procrastinating on?

Take up a new hobby. Do you have a passion for something but never really developed it? Now would be a good time to do that.

Got a musical instrument in the house gathering dust? Go online you will find plenty of courses for free and who knows maybe your the next Ray Charles, Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix???

Still need some inspiration – there are plenty of courses, guides and blogs online to help you learn a new skill, you may even be able to pick up a qualification or two while you are at it.

What is equally important is that you don’t chain yourself to your laptop, working from home generally means you have a little more freedom. If you need a break take one, need social interaction get online with your colleagues and try to compartmentalise your day.

That family time you suddenly have, why not kill the internet for a certain time each day and get the Lego or cards or board games out and have some good old fashioned fun…

Trust me you will thank me later

Thanks for reading