Working from home is not something new to me or to most designers and content creators. For some, it could be very boring and annoying. In early January, I was in China for a work project and had to evacuate to Hong Kong, then I had to self-isolate myself for 14 days in Bali! Now that I am back in Jakarta and have cancelled my flight back to Melbourne, I have to practice another form of self-isolation. So let’s just stay calm; I have been here before. Don't panic and buy every toilet paper and food; we could do something simple at home that would be beneficial for us!

Clean space is essential for working from home.

CLEAN YOU ENTIRE HOME + BE ORGANISED

We can start by cleaning our own space. Things that we touched the most and sometimes neglected, for example, our door knobs, keys, every cabinet’s handles, curtain, and door mat We could try to vacuum the bed as well to suck off those dust mites and dead skin cells. Personally, I clean my home every day, and it always makes me feel good about myself. This time around, my cleaning has been more extreme, often with disinfectant products and more anti-bacterial spray all over my house. COVID-19 is a virus, and it won't be prevented by anti-bacterial spray, but hey, we might as well use it and stay clean in our own space during this self-isolation! A clean space equals a clean mind.

Never quit learning! Online tutorials are available everywhere!

LEARN NEW SKILLS

Yes, you read that correctly. Skills as in plural. In this digital era, there are so many things we could learn online! From language apps, new cooking and baking recipes, videography, photography, and even designing! I have used Duolingo to practice my Mandarin for over a year now; it’s free and effective! Some other websites, such as Skillshare and Masterclass, also offer plenty of lessons we could try (but you have to pay for a monthly subscription; it is worth it to invest in ourselves!). Or, Youtube is always the answer for everything free and full of tutorials. I have learned how to apply make-up by watching a lot of YouTube beauty gurus.

#socialdistancing with the world but not with the e-world!

BINGE-WATCHING / READING / PODCASTING

Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, Apple TV, you name it! Working from home means we could fit a lot of TV shows or new movies into our schedule. I’m not a big book reader; I have stopped reading since I was in high school because I spent too much money on fiction novels and, of course, manga. But if you are a big reader, there are plenty of book recommendations out there from your favourite influencers. Podcasting is another thing to binge on, and the fun part of podcasting is that you can do it anytime while multitasking. Perhaps we could do podcasting while cleaning the house? Hell yeah!

DIGITAL CATCH UP

There are so many platforms we can use to reach out to anyone! Let’s do catch up by calling those friends you haven’t heard from. I texted and DM quite a lot of friends in the past weeks, just to make sure they are okay and healthy wherever they are. Check-in with some facts and situations in their country or city too. A friend in Tonga is very well because there is no case there, some friends are furious with their PM in the UK, and some friends back in Melbourne are frustrated to even get toilet paper in the grocery store. P.S., Do not text your exes!

WORK OUT + EATING HEALTHY

If we only do eating and cooking, surely we would all gain some weight and invest in bad habit. A light exercise is very recommended. Why light exercise? Because we can’t risk any injury to actually go and get the treatment. We can start looking at those Youtube’s videos of exercise and some training images are available on Instagram as well. For those of you who doesn’t like to do exercise, we can start from a basic 10,000 steps a day. I used to go to the gym 5 times a week for 18 months until I found out a thing or two about my metabolism and gym doesn’t help much. I decided to stop to going to the gym, and not only it saves me money every month but also gives me freedom to choose the right exercise for my type of metabolism. Eating healthy is one way to do it. I avoid junk foods and never was a fan of soft drink but I do love cakes and pies which are some of the dangerous things to eat. Know your body type and your nutrition intake while keep doing light exercise. For me, I lost 3 kg just by giving up rice for 1 month!

SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESS

Thank God for food delivery! While staying at home and cook our own food, we would definitely craving something. In my case, I was craving sticky date pudding. It’s very easy to make but kind of hard to find dates in the supermarket. Luckily, some of the local cafe has sticky date pudding and they have food delivery! During this uncertain time, local restaurants, cafe and other small businesses are struggling. So keep in mind to help them while we can, we could order food from them but we need to make sure they have applied the health protocol in their outlets. Simply check their website or Instagram account to see if they have made any announcement regarding the health protocol. To make sure none of their kitchen staff is sick or has any flu symptoms. Not only that we help them to still able to run their business, but we also help those online driver couriers to deliver our order.

I could write more of what we could do while staying at home during this global pandemic. From things that related to meditation, spiritual practice, sexual health activities or even doing side hustle to maintain passive income. But for the time being, let’s just focus on those things above! Stay healthy and stay calm! Don’t forget to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds as often as you can!

Thank you for Rawpixel with all of these beautiful photos!