Redefining boundaries + establishing healthy habits in the era of COVID-19
Did anyone else overdo it on video calls last week?
I’m sure I’m not the only one.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seattle, like so many other places, went into full-on human response mode. It went something like:
We’ve got Zoom, so meet your doom, coronavirus! We’ll keep our physical distance AND socialize with each other more than EVER. HA!
I’m not sure about you, but my relatively-full but pretty mundane schedule suddenly looked like this:
I mean, it got pretty nuts pretty fast. Good nuts, but nuts all the same. And nearly all of it required me to be sitting in front of a screen.
As an extrovert-leaning individual, I definitely dove straight into “the more gatherings the better” mode. After all, if my normal way of being in the world was being threatened, I had to seek out something to grasp onto. With so much out of my control, connecting over video calls seemed like one way I could seize some semblance of normalcy out of this ordeal.
But after a week, I was exhausted.
Because last week was enormous in its emotional impact, and I was trying to sprint my way through it on some sort of extrovert hyperdrive. It just wasn’t sustainable.
Now with a fresh week ahead of me, I decided to get focused on the basics.
It’s time to set some boundaries.
I’ve learned from the rockstar remote workers of Office Nomads that boundaries make a huge difference to being able to actually get things done while working remotely. Boundaries might look a little different and will be a little harder to carve out in this new reality, but I know it’s possible.
Because this thing is going to take a marathon mindset to get through. Completely chucking out my regular routine and hoping to Zoom my way into the future just isn’t going to cut it.
Here are the ones I’m considering:
Make a daily to do list, but it can only have 3 things on it that can actually get done in a day.
No more than two video calls per day (work or personal).
Completing at least one work sprint each day (25 minutes focused work, 5 minute break).
Putting healthy habits front and center
The other thing that last week highlighted for me was how easy it was to throw all of my normal healthy habits out the window. That backfired too. Because it’s going to be impossible to make our way through this phase without taking good care of ourselves.
Taking good care of ourselves means we can take good care of each other (kind of like putting on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else with their own).
How to sustain as a helper.
So I pulled out my list of healthy habits, and am getting back on my “twice a week” habit with each of them. It’s already helping.
Be gentle on yourself, be gentle on each other
Listen to the snail.
This one might be the most important. COVID-19 and it’s rapid impact on all areas of our lives means that we’re all experiencing some level of trauma right now.
Let’s not compare traumas or try to put them into a hierarchy. Let’s just understand that we’re all going through something. So we’re all going to mess up. We might lash out. We may say things we don’t really mean.
Let’s give each other a little extra room for messing up right now. Because adjusting to this new reality is enough.
How are you building boundaries and establishing healthy habits right now? Send us a message and let us know – we’d love to hear your ideas and share them with others.
Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. We can do this.