Self care while self isolating/doing social distance

Hi all!

There’s a lot of anxiety inducing stuff happening at the moment! A lot of us are WFH (maybe when we’re not used to), or practicising social distancing and spending more time in the house than normal (or both!)

This is a good time to think about looking after your mental health in this new routine, and I thought it would be good for us to share our tips!

Mine are:

  • Keeping up a routine as much as you can (exercise - youtube has some free resources, talking to people online, cooking good food, etc)
  • Being aware I might not be on it as much as possible (Anxiety is really tiring, you may have less mental or physical energy than normal, even if you don’t get ill). Give yourself permission to prioritise and let things drop as needed
  • Practice social media pruning: If you can’t take a full break (if you need it for work, or keeping in ocntact with folks) mute words or hashtags, even temporarily, to give yourself a break from the news.
  • I plan to do some more virtual socialising: there are slacks you can join, or things like https://www.netflixparty.com/ and https://en.boardgamearena.com/ to check out

How is everyone doing? Are people taking additional measures for their selfcare at the moment?

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My biggest anxiety, is that for the next month I am doing a mobile release. And since we are all working from home, the mobile automation tools I use are so rubbish that devices need rebooting and clicking on stuff all the time. Most mornings, I cancel any stupid upgrade notifications so the CI system can run smooth for the next day. Guess I will have to go into the office once or twice a week. I’m not experienced at mobile testing enough to deal with that kind of stress.

I usually have a brisk walk to and from the office, so I am simulating that by taking a little jog twice a day instead so that I get the benefit. Aaaaand nobody has to deal with me being a little smelly. And because the aircon at work is a bit busted anyway and overheats us all winter long, I am appreciating the better climate control at home.

As for the social stuff, its not easy. We use Teams at work, which has been offline all day, so we doing teleconferences to keep it all together. I find that on WFH days I go down the rabbit hole on problems a lot more - and find that I spend more time creating github issue tickets or raising bugs in various external products I have to use, instead of just working around problems. That’s a time waster in itself.