So What If You Can’t Be Productive During the Lockdown?

We’ve all seen the countless Instagram or Twitter posts urging us to see this time in self-isolation as a blessing in disguise, a time to grow and pamper ourselves. These posts typically spout inspirational quotes and catchy sayings that are supposed to make you want to immediately hop off the couch and get something done. To their credit, many times they have this exact effect on readers. Not to hate on these posts, because some uplifting and motivation is definitely needed in a time like this, but the absolute flooding of them is also a bit detrimental to the whole point. 

Sometimes, I can’t bring myself to do anything productive. Don’t get me wrong, most days, I try to get something done. If I get at least one thing done, it’s been a good day. Most days, this is working out, which I would highly recommend. If you muster up the motivation to begin, I promise the rest of your day feels so much better. After I work out I have so much more energy and I’m just in a better mood, not to mention the feeling of accomplishment that comes along with exercise. Other days, I read or even try to write a little. I’ve been trying to go through a list of books that I’ve always wanted to read but never found the time or motivation. I’ve read entire books in days. These days are good days. They’re not the days I’m talking about, however.

The worst days are the ones where you want to do something and get something, anything, done but all you can do is click “yes, I’m still watching” on Netflix. It’s not like the good intentions aren’t there but it feels almost impossible to get up and do anything besides scroll through social media for hours on end. I had one of these days yesterday and I felt horrible about it at first. I woke up at 2:30 and I mean, that’s excessive even for me. I literally did nothing yesterday. I watched Narcos: Mexico and New Girl on rotation. I meant to do homework and send emails out, but I never got to it. 

Anyways, the point is that after feeling bad and beating myself up for wasting a day, I realized that I probably needed that day. There’s so much going on in the world and in everyone’s personal lives as a result that these “wasted” days are almost a necessity. We shouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves to get everything that we’ve ever wanted to do done during this time. I feel like many of us are setting unachievable goals for ourselves and that’s just leading to more stress. During this time, we should try to accomplish our goals but also be kind to ourselves if we don’t reach them as quickly as we’d like.

It’s okay to have goals and things we wish to complete during this free time but it’s just as okay to give ourselves a little leeway for not accomplishing some of them.

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