Suggestions and solutions: ● Eyes: cucumber, chamomile, and echinacea are good. Also see the 20-20-20 technique below. ● Back: exercise is key: getting out of the house once a day, hula-hoop, Pilates, tricep-dips, running up and down stairs, standing up once an hour; change position / chair / room quite often. ● On video calls: video calls are cognitively more demanding than audio, and a long day on video will burn you out quicker. It may also put extra demands on your appearance and on keeping your ‘visible space’ – living-room etc. - tidy. So, suggestions (depending on your varying circumstances) were to make video optional, try to have some audio-only meetings, look away from the screen in video calls, or begin meetings with video and switch to audio after 10 minutes, leaving a profile photo. ● Baking: sourdough and shortbread were popular recipes (though yeast and flour were both challenging to find – a problem hopefully not to be repeated). ● Outdoors: regular tea breaks in a garden or on a balcony, whatever the weather; listen to birdsong; take up hulahooping (“to justify the shortbread”); get out for a walk every day, come rain, come shine, come snow; go running; gardening; turbo training; power walking in the countryside. Biking. ● Indoors: keep regular hours, Monday to Friday; keep clear boundaries between home life and work life; keep screen-time low at weekends; have lunch away from the desk, in a separate room or outside if you can; make time for hobbies like art, piano, workouts; try the 20-20-20 technique = every 20 minutes, stop for 20 seconds and look 20 ft (6.1m) into the distance (this helps with eyes, too). Pilates. Yoga. Reading books (not e-books) (P.G. Wodehouse for example, light, fun…). Sewing. ● Tech: take time ‘off the grid’, with all devices switched off for eg 36 hours; allow yourself ‘audio-only’ * meetings when you can, as video-meetings are more draining and tire you out faster; if you can’t have audio-only, don’t look at the screen. Look professional, but don’t worry – shoulders up only ????. Try voice-to-text programmes like Dragon or Google Voice Typing when writing longer texts, transcripts etc, to reduce type / screen time (though for transcripts, be prepared to edit). *remember that for tutorials, synchronous classes or meetings where rapport is important, some students or staff members may feel ‘safer’, more comfortable and more connected in a video call – check first. With family, partners…: eat with others; do activities like baking, hiking etc with your ‘significant other’ (if you have one). |
