Living in quarantine might make it difficult to live a well-organized and structured life. Your sleep schedule may be disturbed, because you are probably doing a lot less, so your body is not tired enough to sleep. Most importantly, you probably don’t know what to do anymore. So, to help you with all of that, we wrote a suggestion of a general daily routine.
Wake up early
As tempting as it is to stay in bed all day, try to wake up at a reasonable, early time. If you stay in bed too long you will have trouble falling a sleep at night and probably will fall asleep eventually around 3 am, then you will wake up again around 1 pm and you’ll go down this downward spiral in which these times will only get worse. If you struggle with waking up in the morning, try to drink a lot of water before going to bed so that you will have to go to the bathroom in the morning, put your alarm away from your bed so that you will have to get out of bed and walk to turn it off, take a quick cold shower to awaken, or eat an apple as they provide energy.
Be Active
It is important to remain as active as possible. Your body is probably used to at least some sort of workout on a daily basis, walking to your classes, cycling through the park, etc. Now that you are at home all day you may become restless and more and more fatigued of not doing anything. So, after waking up try a morning workout from your living room, follow online Zumba classes, other dance classes, or simply turn up some music and have a dance battle with your roommates or yourself. Doing a workout in the morning will make you energized to start the day, decreases stress and will have you sleep a lot better at night. If a morning workout isn’t really your thing, you can absolutely do a workout at any other time during the day.
Work from home
Many people will still have to work on their school assignments, projects, and follow online classes, or maybe you have things to do for your job or internship. Try to do this at the beginning of your day when you can concentrate best and to make sure you have all the time to relax in the afternoon. Doing a little bit every day will also help creating a routine and will avoid you from becoming bored as you’ll have something to do every day. If you don’t have any important upcoming deadlines or work related assignments, you could also create something for yourself. For example, create a blog account and try to post something twice a week, make a photo album or video compilation of all the photos/videos you took during your experience abroad, or make vlogs about your current life. Try to give yourself some deadlines, in order to have a ‘purpose’ during these weeks. You could also use this time to clean, do your laundry, take out the trash, etc. Make sure you keep up with your chores!
Discover a new hobby
After having worked on the important assignments and such, you could spend some time trying to find a new hobby. You can also spend your time on a hobby you already have, to simply enjoy it or try to improve it. If you don’t really have a hobby yet, try something new every day and you might find one that you really like and will continue with once the quarantine is over. You could try hobbies that don’t require much knowledge and skill building, such as reading, playing games, dancing (depends on the type of dancing), taking care of plants etc. You could also try hobbies that improve your mind and teach you new things, such as playing brain games, writing, learning a new language, playing an instrument, etc. Nevertheless, any hobby will improve your mind set and will increase your knowledge. Being able to focus on one thing and putting time an effort in it is really good for a healthy and educated mind.
Cook a nice dinner
Other than eating a proper breakfast, lunch, and some snacks during the day, you should spend some time cooking a nice meal. This is the perfect opportunity to improve your cooking skills. There are many different recipes you can try out and many things you probably have never tried before. Luckily, we have the internet that helps us find any meal we might be interested in. If you decide to follow a recipe that takes a while to prepare, the time will pass faster and you will not have to be bored for a while. However, if you are looking to cook and create some easy meals you can take a look at this blog post that contains several simple Spanish recipes.
Relax
After dinner it is time to relax and clear your mind. There are many ways to do this, you could binge watch series on Netflix, play (video) games, video call friends/family, meditate, listen to some music, give yourself a ‘spa day’, etc. Any activity during which you don’t have to think much would be good enough. Relaxation is another very important thing you should take some time for on a daily basis. Especially at the end of the day before you go to bed, in order have a clear, calm mind and to be able to fall asleep easily. This will decrease the chances of insomnia, nightmares, sleep paralysis and other un-pleasantries you could face during the night. It also improves your mental health, helps with positive thinking, and decision making skills. So, take some time to relax, but not too much time of course you will still need to keep training your brain.
Go to bed on time
Lastly, try to go to bed at a reasonable time. Mainly, for the same reason as why you should wake up on time, to avoid the frustrating downward spiral. It is understandable that you tend to go to bed at 3 am nowadays, because life has slowed down a lot. But try to not do this, because once the quarantine is over and we will all go back to our normal lives again, it will be very difficult to lose the habit of living in that spiral of going to bed and waking up late.
This was our suggestion of a daily routine you could follow. It is very general and you can do whatever you want at any given time during the day. We hope this will help you find some structure during this very unclear and uncontrollable time. Good luck and stay safe and healthy!
