Top strategies and insights for personal wellbeing and productivity at home
How to keep calm and be creative when the world is upside down
We are living through unprecedented and hard times.
Most of us are experiencing a Coronavirus lockdown. We were not prepared for this and we feel like fish that fell out of water.
We are currently living in a VUCA world — a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
Think about the power of the Coronavirus for one second. It is so small that it is not even visible to the eye. However, it has brought the world to a standstill. The Butterfly Effect of the Coronavirus has led to the crashing of global markets, a global economic crisis, the shutting down of schools, universities, restaurants, and the cancellation of almost all public gatherings worldwide.
We are also facing more systemic changes in our ways of life. Everything is in flux right now. regarding how we work, live, learn, entertain, consume, interact, and contribute.
As our worlds are turning upside down and we are locked down in our houses, I will try to share with you my own strategies for coping well and thriving at home.
1. Your health and wellbeing are of utmost priority right now.
Nothing is more important than your health and wellbeing.
First, you need to take care of yourself and your beloved ones.
Your morale is your absolute priority during these times.
Please stay at home, wash your hands, try to stay positive but alert.
I know that your work or studies may not be on top of your priority list right now. And this is absolutely fine.
Your health and wellbeing are of an utmost priority now, and please take good care of yourselves and your beloved ones.
My advice: Stay at home. Try to stay positive and creative — as much as you can.
Try not to follow too much news — it gets depressing after 5 hours of news and social media. I have been there.
It does not help at all if you refresh the John Hopkins coronavirus world numbers page every hour.
You need to just let it go and go on intermittent fasting on the news and social media.
2. Cultivate your inner strength: The world needs you as a sane, healthy, positive person
As chaotic as it can seem during these times, your inner strength is more important than ever. So, please try to strengthen yourself morally, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.
Now is the time to be a strong role model.
It’s not the time to panic and focus on what else can go wrong.
Panic does not help at all — we have all been there.
Fear, panic, and stress are not the solution — we need to be wiser.
Try to find the positives by focusing on inner reflection and growth.
Whenever you are overwhelmed, write down in your diary for 20 minutes. Capture your stream of consciousness without censoring anything. Put all your anxieties, stress, and fears on paper.
Make sure you listen to your fears and make them heard. The best way to do this is to reflect and write down.
Whenever you write things down, you will feel more powerful and liberated.
Use this time to work on your relationships. Work on connecting with your beloved ones. Turn off electronics, and be present. Spend high-quality time with one another.
Cook at home. Eat healthily.
Exercise at home. Keep moving and walking.
Turn on your favorite music and do stupid and crazy dances if you feel like it. Nobody is to judge you.
Slow down. Read, write, and reflect at home.
Pick up your favorite books. You can choose to finish that book you have been putting off.
You can choose to learn new skills and knowledge. Choose online courses you can finish under lockdown. Learn something new every day.
You can choose to invest in yourself, your health, your relationships, and your family. When the virus is contained (hopefully soon) and your life goes back to normal, you will look back and be grateful for what you learned.
You will feel accomplished for staying strong and staying sane in the midst of all the crisis and craziness surrounding you.
It is always better to choose positive action and positive habits over panic.
Choose action over panic.
Choose movement over anxiety.
Choose a healthy mindset over freaking out.
Discover your inner strength — you have what it takes to survive and thrive these times.
3. This is probably the biggest time and opportunity in your life to pick up on your hobbies.
Yes, these are gloomy times.
Yes, we are losing too many lives.
Yes, it is very difficult to keep your sanity during these times.
It is natural that we grieve, cry, freak out, and experience anxiety and sorrow. It is all fine. Forgive yourself. These times shall also pass.
You need to stick to activities and hobbies that keep you sane.
What do you love doing?
What are your top activities and hobbies that you want to take on?
Please make a list and then try some of them.
Taking up on your hobbies will be one of the best decisions you can make in this period in your life.
Your inner voice and resistance will surely tell you:
“Oh, come on. How can you be so selfish during this time? People are dying over there and you are here enjoying yourself? Shame on you!”
Here is my conversation with my inner voice:
Me: “I know the world is suffering and I suffer with them. What do you want me to do?”
Inner voice: “Suffer. Follow the news. Freak out. Panic.”
Me: “I already do these things. I have done these things non-stop for days. I have been there. I binge-watched all contagion movies, apocalyptic movies, and so on. I followed the news and social media for 10 hours a day. I have freaked out. These strategies do not work for me. I have been there.”
Inner voice: “So, what do you want to do instead?”
Me: “I want to be able to keep myself sane and active. I want to be able to do things that I love doing. I want to be able to pursue my hobbies.”
So, you need to engage in an inner conversation with yourself. Acknowledge your fears and stress. Listen to your inner voice and make it heard.
However, at the same time, you can still take charge of your life by taking a more positive and active stance.
You can still take up some of your hobbies. It is OK.
The world needs you as a sane, healthy, positive person.
You will be more helpful if you stay in a positive zone.
Therefore, please take up on your hobbies.
Which activities and hobbies could increase your happiness and creativity?
Writing, reading, creating artwork, blogging, gardening, knitting, solving puzzles? Or else?
For example, I prefer doodling to increase my happiness and creativity.
I try to doodle every day — it helps me to soothe down and slow down.
Doodling has become an automatic activity for me. It does not require much time or resources. Just a pencil, a notebook, and 15 minutes are all you need.
So, I have incorporated doodling a feature of my daily life.
After one year, I have realized that I have finished hundreds of doodles. I have incorporated them into my teaching and students really liked it.
Before I knew it, I realized that a book has emerged from my doodles.
Now, this book, Self-Making Studio is being sold in 14 countries across the world.
So, never underestimate the value of a hobby.
Your hobbies can be very powerful if you take small actions consistently and sustain them over a period of time.
Try to create these pockets of positive activity in your life. Schedule time for them.
What activities and hobbies could increase your happiness and creativity?
Are there things you have been putting off because you have been too busy?
This is your perfect time and opportunity to pick up on these hobbies and activities.
Do yourself a favor and turn your hobbies into projects.
4. Establish a system of being creative and productive at home.
In order to be more creative and productive, we need to shift our perspective.
Instead of thinking about the miseries, we will need to endure because we are locked up at home, we will need to think and do differently.
We need a new positive mindset.
Think of this as a creative opportunity.
We know that we are more creative when we are further away from the problem that we are working on. Researchers call this psychological distance and it is known to help creativity. This means we now have a real-time opportunity to be more creative about our jobs and our work.
In order to start, I recommend you to create 10 new and fresh ideas about your work every day. Write them down now.
Make this exercise a positive habit. Capture your ideas in a diary. Your brain loves puzzles. Approaching your work from fresh angles is your puzzle right now. Work on it. One way is to take the perspective of another person. Ask yourself: Who else is working on this problem? Borrow from unrelated fields, practices, and domains. Surprise yourself.
Evidence shows that creativity thrives on constraints. Constraints are great triggers for creativity. People who have fewer resources and more constraints are known to be more creative.
We now have the constraint of working at home. I believe that we can use this as leverage to be more creative.
In 1665, when Cambridge University was closed down due to a plague, Issac Newton quarantined himself at his home. It was the most productive and creative time of his life. He discovered the laws of motion during this period.
So, you can change the wiring and conditioning of your mind:
What will you discover or develop or write or create during this period in your life?
Which fresh and creative ideas can you bring to the world?
In your own work, you can set the bar high enough so that you push yourself to new heights of creativity and productivity.
5. You can cultivate creative and productive habits in the comfort of your own house.
Remember that creativity is situational, and it can be cultivated. Here is the formula:
Consistent Small Actions + Smart Moves + Hard Work + Play Your Game
Try to create productive and positive work habits.
One of the biggest killers of productivity is distractions, and there are many distractions at home. You can use timers or the Pomodoro technique to schedule your writing or creative practice.
Where and when do you work best? It is important to know yourself and create a work station or a work environment that you feel comfortable with.
It is also critical to prioritize your tasks and schedule high priority tasks and projects to your ‘flow’ hours — the time(s) of the day that you feel most productive.
6. This is your opportunity to reinvent yourself and create assets for your future.
You can use this lockdown situation as an opportunity to reinvent yourself.
You can focus on re-designing and re-imagining and re-setting your life and your career.
You can choose to sharpen your skills and expand your knowledge. Read new books, listen to podcasts, keep a diary, create lots of ideas, and follow up on your curiosities and hobbies.
You can design yourself new challenges every day — these might be physical, mental, creative, emotional, or spiritual challenges that you can take up in your home.
You can take stock, learn, pivot, act, experiment, and improve.
You can track your goals regarding your physical and mental health, career, learning, skills, creative self-expression, finances, relationships, time management, sleep, diet, hobbies, passions, and interests.
If you are lacking or lagging behind on some of these areas, you can reflect on what is wrong and how you might initiate positive change.
Some of the most successful leaders or investors — as well as innovative start-ups — emerged during periods of economic crises.
Perhaps this is a good time to change your habits and make a better version of yourself.
Perhaps this is a great time to expand your imagination and improve your resiliency.
You can develop more frugal habits, learn and experiment with new life and work skills, and finish MOOCs in your fields of interest.
You can attend free courses, seminars, and conferences that are available on the Internet.
You can spend time on asset creation.
You can provide yourself more opportunities for:
- Imagination and creativity,
- Problem solving and idea creation, and
- Asset Creation activities.
You can perhaps start a small creative project that you have always wanted to do, but you were terrified.
You can perhaps start composing music, drawing, singing, dancing, or creating your own fashion line.
What does your heart desire? Go for it.
Start small. Small is beautiful.
Feel free to make mistakes. Ugly is fine. Mistakes are your friend.
After completion of your creative task or project, you should share it with the world, so that everyone will see your work and enjoy it.
It is very satisfying to share your passions and artwork, to put them out there for enjoyment and benefit of others.
7. This is the best time in your life to establish your own creative game.
Back in September, I had written on how to prepare for an economic crisis. And here we are in the midst of a major economic crisis. You can read my suggestions here.
To create the future that you want and to avoid becoming vulnerable, you need to establish your own game instead of playing the game of others (i.e. your organization, your institution, your university, etc.).
Playing your own game means you need to create your own assets for the long term.
Think and imagine bigger.
You can establish and own your own game.
It is all based on your imagination.
There are fascinating things that only you can bring to the world.
Fresh, exciting, and original things.
What are they?
How can you take a small action now towards making these happen?
How can you continue taking small steps every day?
How can you continue your adventure every day without quitting and without breaking the chain (of creating)?
What will you bring to the world out there?
Remember: Everything you need is within you. Find the strength within you rather than looking to the outside world for answers.
I hope and pray that we can soon continue our courses and lives as usual — as healthy individuals.
I also know that there are big shifts happening in the world right now.
I am also aware that we need to design new and creative ways of working, writing, learning, sharing, caring, collaborating, serving, contributing, and helping one another.
Please take good care of yourself and your beloved ones.
Let us hang in there, support each other during these difficult times, keep calm, and carry on.
Wash your hands, stay home, stay strong, stay positive, and stay creative.
As I finish, I am leaving you with a fun and positive video: BTS Carpool Karaoke!
I hope you enjoy it:)
Sincere regards;
Fahri