Bored at home in self-isolation? How to stay entertained

Surviving boredom is a challenge for many people who are self-isolating at home during the COVID-19 outbreak. If you’re bored at home, here are ways to stay occupied and entertained.

Why you’re bored at home

Are you someone who likes a routine? If so, you likely enjoy the stability, predictability and organization that comes with this routine. You get up in the morning, get ready and head to work, facing up to the morning commute.

You’ll generally stay in your office or other work environment during the day, working on projects and collaborating with colleagues. then head home – once again facing the dreaded commute.

Once at the house, make dinner, do some chores, watch some Netflix or another streaming service, and it’s bedtime. The day flew by!

On the weekends, meet up with friends or spend some time with family. Throughout the week, you’ll incorporate moderate aerobic exercise into the routine, perhaps heading to the gym or meeting up with a personal trainer.

Some people like routines. Others aren’t so fond of them. But nowadays, you’re facing an altogether different situation. The spread of coronavirus and outbreak of Covid-19 have resulted in an unprecedented worldwide pandemic.

Suddenly countries are closing their borders. Suddenly you’re being asked to socially distance and socially isolate within your house. You’re being told only to leave for essentials, such as food or medications. Your routine is… out of whack.

It’s surreal. And scary.

It has left many feeling lost. But there are ways to stop being bored at home and maintain a good routine. Doing so is important to help minimize anxiety and feelings of distress.

Here are a few ideas:

Working from home

If you are able to work from home and your employer is still up and running, that’s great. You will still spend a big part of your day completing the projects that are usually expected of you.

But working from home is an entirely different kettle of fish to working from an office. You don’t have anyone watching over you, for starters, to ensure you’re on task.

There’s no one to stop you from taking an extra break to watch TV, nap, or look through your Facebook feed. To combat this potential procrastination, it’s good to keep a schedule.

Break your day into chunks and allocate work to each section. This method will help to ensure that all of your projects are done on time.

Something else that you might struggle with is communication. It may be difficult to work without checking in on your colleagues, finding out information from them and having the meetings you’d usually be having.

To help make communication easier, see whether your workplace will invest in software like Microsoft Teams to provide you all with simple instant messaging and easy to operate video calls or conference calls. If you’re not working a job, but are in school instead, follow this coronavirus guide for students to keep your studies on track.

Exercising

Nope, you can’t head to the gym. You can’t see personal trainers in person either.

You can’t attend sports clubs. Nope to attending fitness classes too.

But you still need to hit that 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a week. So, make sure you get it. It’ll get your mind off of being bored at homw too!

First, you can go for a walk, jog or run outside for one hour a day. Just stay two metres (six feet) away from anyone else who may be walking, jogging or running nearby.

Then, you can use home workouts. There are so many online tutorials and videos that you can follow from the comfort of your own home.

Find ones that entertain you, whether it’s an instructor whose music you like or a certain activity that’s got you wanting to do it repeatedly. There are great yoga tutorials, general workouts and more.

You might also want to invest in some lower-cost home gym equipment for the time being. Consider a yoga mat, some resistance bands, foam rollers, exercise balls, handheld weights and other options that are on the market.

Stay in touch with others

You can’t see anyone who lives in a separate household to you at the moment. That means that you can’t have face-to-face contact or visits with many of your loved ones, whether that’s friends, family, or anyone else.

The good news is that this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re completely cut off from them. Instead, you can keep in touch virtually.

It’s great to be living in a technological age where people have multiple means of digital contact available. You can get in touch with a simple phone call, for example.

Or, you can text someone. But you can also stay in touch through social media, video calls and even group video calls.

Make sure to keep in touch with others. Doing so will help you to stave away feelings of loneliness, as well keep yourself occupied throughout the day.

These conversations can lift your spirits, as well as helping those who are on the other end of the conversation. They might be feeling sad and not have spoken up about their feelings – Your call to them likely made their day brighter!

Start a new hobby

If you have plenty of hobbies that you can do from home, then you’re in luck. But for a lot of folks, the usual hobbies involve heading out, socializing in person, or spending time in places other than the house.

If you find yourself in the second group, now is a good time to develop some new interests and pick up more home-based hobbies. There are so many different things you can try out.

If you’re a fan of cakes or bread, why not try some home baking? This takes a fair amount of time, so it can occupy you instead of being borded at home, and gives a great (and yummy) reward at the end.

Don’t have any recipes on hand? Get some from blogs, Pinterest and Instagram feeds.

If you have a book lying about that you’ve been meaning to pick up for months, why not get into it now? Settle down in a comfortable spot with your favourite drink and start making your way through the pages.

About being bored at home during novel coronavirus times

Sure, we’re living through some pretty difficult times, and we may feel that we were relatively unprepared for them. But there are ways to get through this while maintaining good mental health and feeling optimistic about life after the pandemic.

Yes, there will be an “after.”

Hopefully, the above advice will help to instil a sense of routine and purpose into your life from home and reduce any feelings of boredom you may have been struggling with!