What a month it has been. The COVID-19 pandemic has spread throughout the whole world and everyone is staying home. We are all using terms we haven’t heard before, social isolation, flatten the curve, etc.
Everyone that is able to work remotely is doing exactly that. The majority, if not all, of knowledge workers are working from home. Now is the time to invest in ourselves, improve our skills, master our productive and come out better on the other end.
First of all, Relax
It seems like every piece of news is related to this virus and just by looking at it we’re seeding fear into ourselves. Well that is what the news thrive on, emotional response. But we know better right. We are already doing everything within our control: Staying mostly at home, limiting our contact with other people, keeping personal hygiene, washing our hands 100 times per day, all of that. There is no much point in reading the same news over and over again. Most of them are negative. It’s enough to spend 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening and you’ll be all caught up. Not much is happening really in terms of progress so far, we’ll just have to wait it out.
In the meantime let us make productive use of our time, move our attention to what we can do about ourselves, our health, our careers, our network and our skills. Read on.
Health first
Eating clean and staying active is one of the most important things you can do for your health and immunity. Of course nothing provides total immunity from the virus, but still better immunity will probably make you get over it quicker and with less consequences.
So bust out the mat and do some home workout or wake up early before everyone else and go for a walk.
Networking while everyone is home
Now is the time to send that cold email, tweet or LinkedIn message to that person you’ve been trying to reach for a while. Every celebrity, influencer, mentor, business partner, everyone is at home. The chances of them seeing your email are 10 times greater. But make sure to write a good one.
If you don’t have anyone in mind, think about the leaders in your industry and try to connect with them. If you’re into rockets, you probably won’t be able to get in touch with Elon Musk, but perhaps you will get an email response from one of the engineers working at SpaceX. Sure they are still working, but after work everyone is staying at home being bored, now is your chance.
Invest in yourself
This is a no brainer, we all know what to do. Instead of wasting our extra spare time on tv shows or social media, we could use it to advance our skills and expand our knowledge.
You can expand within your industry
If you’re a programmer, try a new programming language.
If you’re a musician, try a new instrument.
Or in adjacent industry
As a programmer, learn about design, or business.
As a musician, try to paint.
As a researcher, try to build something practical or learn to code, it could help you in many ways.
As a video-editor, try to edit images.
Create content, articles, videos, podcasts, tweets
I will bet that the time people spend online has doubled this past month. If you have a blog, now is the time to write your heart out. If you have a youtube channel, now is the time record your heart out. If you don’t have one, now is a great time to start.
You can write about managing times of crisis within your industry.
Or you can give people a breadth of fresh air and write about something totally unrelated. Why? Because there is nothing we can do about it except stay at home, we’re already doing that.
Get a remote part time job
A lot of companies that were planning to open offices are now putting a stop to that and hiring remote, at least for the time being. Use your spare time to get a part time side job and make some extra money.
Until next time.
Stay calm, stay home and stay productive.
