Two things help keep me grounded during quarantine: designated spaces and transition practices.
Designated Spaces
My bed is where I sleep and watch Netflix. My desk is where I write. The chair by the fireplace is where I read in the morning before work. The couch by the window is where I read on weekends. The window-facing side of the dining room table is where I work-from-home. The interior-facing side of the dining room table is where I eat dinner.
It might sound extreme, but relating my daily activities to specific spacial contexts like this has helped me maintain structure within the relative confines of social distancing. It also helps cue my brain when I’m moving from one activity to another. Something as simple as sitting on the opposite side of the table tells my subconscious, “Hey, we’re eating now, not working. Shut it down.”
Transition Practices
Taking this one step further is the idea of transition practices. The idea is that you set up deliberate, specific activities throughout your day that help you transition, both mentally and physically, from one part of your day to the next.
If you work an eight-hour day in front of a computer (as I now do), it’s incredibly hard to just tell your brain to move on to relaxation time at 5:00. A transition practice is a yoga flow, a run, a shower—any ritual that cues your brain to close one door and pass through another.
What I have found to be the alternative to transition practices is a feeling of residual, nagging unease, like I left something undone. My mind continues to spin with to-do items, sometimes hours after I’ve turned off my work computer, preventing me from complete presence and rejuvenation during my non-work hours. I think of it as bad time hygiene: allowing the next part of my day to be muddied by the previous.
Transitioning from my morning routine to my workday looks like: putting on clothes that are not part of my quarantine outfit (i.e. sweatpants and a hoodie) and setting up my work-from-home station at the dining room table.
Transitioning from my workday to my evening routine looks like: packing up my work-from-home station (never leaving it set up overnight), and then doing some yoga, or going on a walk, or just lighting candles and making myself a drink.
The combination of designating specific spaces for specific activities and building transition practices into my day helps me retain a sense of calm and remain fully present and aware, regardless of the context.
(Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash)