The current lockdown brought about due to the onset of the Covid19 is an unprecedented event in the lives of every individual today in their lifetime. It is not something that anyone of us has seen in our current lifetime and something that we all hope to not see again.

During these times we all go through a sense of stress due to the uncertainty that the event has brought upon us and depression due to the isolation and removal from our daily life.

Every individual has his / her way of managing the same. These are the things that I did:

  1. Sticking to the routine:

    • Its good to stick to your daily routine. This ensures to keep a sense of time. it could be tempting to fall into a more lethargic lifestyle, which would lead to negative thinking. Wake up and go to bed around the same time, eat food, shower, as usual. It will ensure that once the lockdown is over, I can adjust back to my life the way it was before the lockdown. I still wake up at the same time, get ready, eat all my meals at the same time. I have pets – so I take them for a walk morning and night (Evening added as I am at home now)
    • A new routine added would be the games that we as a family play every day. Be it cards, to Uno to Chinese checkers.
    • Following up with my team members and ensuring they did the same down the line so everyone is connected.

  1. Avoid Negative News:

    • Negative /Fake news tends to bring a lot of negative affect on the mind as well. During the time I ensured that the news I followed was from reliable sources and also that it did not take a lot of my time during the day. This ensured that not a lot of time was spent obsessing over the negativity of the event and avoid the spiral down to a negative mindset.

  2. Declutter:

    • We, humans, are born hoarders. This lockdown allowed me the time to clean up the house of all the junk that I did not need and clear space allowing a cleaner environment to live in. The plan was simple, every day for 2 – 3 hours the family would clean up one space of the house, remove the junk (Pack the usable things not needed and can be donated) and clean up the house. We ended up with almost 3 cartons of materials which we could donate to the help staff for their use. A little bit of help during the times.

  3. Support / Help in the household works:

    • The lockdown has affected the whole family and not just me. So during the times, it was important that I also supported the family in the household chores. This ensured that no one individual was burdened with the work for the whole household.

  4. Finish your pending works:

    • Pending works can be anything. The following are what I did:
      1. Cleaned up my finances. As it is also the year-end, collated all the documents related to my tax filing.
      2. Completed/kept ready documents about all the bank / financial work that I might need to take up post the lockdown.
      3. Sorted out all my papers and filed up in a place.

  1. Do that activity that you have been wanting to do:

    • All of us have that something that we have wanted to do, it can be watching something online, reading a book, during a course online. For me, it was catching up on a few shows that I watched and read some of the books that I had bought but stored them on the shelf.

These are what I did till now.

The cleaning has been 3/4thdone; the shows are almost caught upon. The coming week I also plan to do a couple of short online courses and continue with the above-mentioned routine.

Another act would be the taking up of plans/activities post lockdown at work. The teams that would need to be called, the activities that would need to be taken up and ensuring that all the patrons of the institution were informed that we are up and running. Some of the plans and activities for the next week.

written by Shashwat Gehenwar