How to change your lifestyle for the better during coronavirus lockdown

Kenya is not under coronavirus lockdown, at least not yet. That doesn’t mean people haven’t locked themselves in. Actually if you’d do a survey you’ll be surprised that up to 30% of urban dwellers have locked themselves in their houses in a system they call self quarantine. Most of those locked in are young people whose schools were the first to be shut down on March 14th when President Kenyatta announced a raft of measures meant to curb the spread of coronavirus. The self quarantine has therefore left many with a lot of time in their hands wondering what to do with all that free time, free time that almost all are wasting away.

Now instead of wasting away the free time snap chatting or resharing old Instagram photos (we have been made to understand that hardly anyone is sharing new photos given the situation at home), you could instead be engaged in a number of activities tailored towards changing your lifestyle for the better during this period of self imposed coronavirus lockdown. The Activities include:

Learn

This is the one single activity that’s applicable to everyone, and if you are in the majority group, the first thing I’d advise you to do is to learn how to think – critically. Critical or Analytical thinking is a very rare skill and its lack has cost us a lot. Part of the problems we are faced with, maybe the single most contributor to the reason we might not see a full coronavirus lockdown come our way, is because we do not exercise any critical thinking. To think critically, you can start by reading and understanding this article, then head over to Farman Street to find their article on Learning How to Think: The Skill No One Taught You. Be sure to follow the guidelines to the letter. Once you have learnt how to think, you shall have made a big step towards safeguarding yourself against falling prey to conspiracy theories and fake news, alongside making it possible for you to always be able to make informed decisions about your life.

The second thing you need to learn is improving yourself on your specialization. Maybe you are a procurement officer, a front desk operator, an accountant, electrician, instrumental engineer, whatever your career is, this is the time to check online and find courses, free or paid, that can help you be better at what you do. It’s not just courses that you need to spend time pursuing, but reading too. Now it’s the right time to order that book you have really wanted to read, or just find useful online resources such as ebooks, videos, documentaries and quality web articles/papers that dwell on subjects that both interest you and that are related to that career. With your already acquired critical thinking skills, you should be able to organise this knowledge into items that become practically useful.

Lastly, learn new skills. You might be a scientist but why don’t you try you luck with some artistic skills? Probably it is time to learn filmmaking, or gardening, or cooking, or drawing, or playing a guitar. With the world being as dynamic as it is, that even without coronavirus lockdown you are probably going to lose your job as AI continues to entrench itself in our lives, you are likely to survive better when you have multiple skill sets. The artists too, right now is probably the time to learn a little bit of Computer Programming particularly those that are tailored towards Machine Learning and Big Data. A data science course would be nice to pursue – and I promise you there are a lot of free but quality online courses that you can follow.

Work remotely/Earn money online

Learning is all nice but you can’t pursue it forever in an empty pocket. By the end of the day you still have bills to pay. Good news is that with almost every country in Europe and Asia in lockdown right now, more and more work is being taken online. This then has provided you with an opportunity to make money online. Instead of repeating what others have already written, here I would just direct you to links like this one, this one, and this other other one that have complete guidelines on how you can make decent monthly income online. For example personally since 2013 I have been able to make a living by writing on this site and at our sister site www.kachwanya.com, and that’s what they mean when they advise you to start your own website.

Play games with friends indoors

If there is one thing that coronavirus lockdown has made impossible is gathering, and this is applicable everywhere in the world right now. It doesn’t matter whether the country is under official coronavirus lockdown or whether what is being practised is the ordinary social distancing – gatherings have been banned.

With banned gatherings it has become so hard to socialise. Camp trips, clubbing, concerts, sports events – all these activities have been cancelled. But we all know how social life is important. Without social bonding we are very likely to get into stress and depression very quickly.

Lucky for some of us, we are locked into our houses with some friends and family. This has its own negatives but it is up to you know figure out how to make the best out of it. As you watch WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook Status Updates, you realise that elsewhere people are becoming more and more creative on how to spend their time indoors. Games are being improvised that can be played with friends or even with neighbors. Get inspired from such and create your own indoor fun that you can enjoy with your friends.

Play games with friends online

But we are not all lucky to be locked in with friends, or family. Those of you who are all alone but cannot go anywhere, don’t fret – at least as long as you can be online. After using your online time to learn, you still have to connect to your family and friends that have been separated from you. Get to your computer, get to your smartphone, download some of those online games, and schedule time to play them together. Here I don’t have to tell you which online games you need to download as they are as many as there are different game tastes worldwide. The type that gets to you and your friends, and as long as it can be played online, is what you need to search for and start playing.

Stay healthy

After you are done playing, make sure you eat well, exercise even if it means doing some little pushups on your kitchen floor for 30 minutes, take a good shower, breath in and out deeply, jog at the same spot (I do 500-1000 jogs in my living room), or practice a new exercise regime that you can get from the thousands of YouTube video lessons. Then get some good sleep. Find a way of getting that quality sex too.