Jennifer Peña/Assistant Opinion Director
When the pandemic set in over a month ago, it threw plans and patterns into the wind for many of us. In my case, I was fortunate to work at an on-campus job that was able to transition to an at-home job. However, this means that life, work and school all started to happen in the same place.
With so much time spent at home, it’s easy for a lot of us to want to stay up late and sleep in on our days off until time begins to blur—especially now that the summer semester has started. Still, in times like these, having a productive routine can help us build positive personal results out of this anything-but-routine situation.
In my experience, I realized the importance of routines as I was working on final projects not long after I started playing the latest “Animal Crossing” game. At home, it’s so easy to reach for game consoles or have YouTube videos playing on the side even though there’s homework to be done.
To create a sense of work-life balance even though the lines between them were increasingly blurring, I set up a two-week curfew of sorts. During that timeframe, I promised myself that I would work on projects and other productive tasks every weekday until at least six p.m., whenever I could help it.
Doing so helped me separate work time from playtime, and it also reminded me of what my routine was like before FIU transitioned to remote learning. In the first half of the spring semester, I was either in class, working or doing homework on campus from mornings to early afternoons.
Unless you have a perfectly planned morning routine like Rapunzel at the start of “Tangled,” it can be hard to stay motivated and able to focus on self-care at home, especially without access to on-campus resources like fitness facilities and the library.
Fortunately, FIU’s Wellness and Recreation Center is offering virtual fitness options through YouTube and Zoom to help students find ways to get regular exercise, especially for people who prefer guided workouts. As for the library, the online database is the next best thing while FIU is closed.
Finding ways to set up routines has helped me boost productivity at home without sacrificing my time to the void, especially thanks to online resources that make it a little easier to take care of ourselves at home.
Maybe your only reason for not sleeping in all weekend is that you want to buy the digital turnips in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” that are only available on Sunday mornings. Whatever your reason is for getting up early (or not), maintaining a routine can be a useful way to make the most of your days in these strange times.
Featured image by Rawpixel Ltd on Flickr.
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