7 Productive Things To Do During Quarantine/Lockdown – COVID-19

Sharing is caring!

We’re all inside our homes in every part of the world because of the new term – lockdown as a result of pandemic caused by COVID-19, right? Well, most of us might not have the habit of staying home for this long in a day. And, as it has been weeks, we might be feeling that all our time is going wasted.

If you are an employee, or University student, or a high school student, or a school going student, you might feel being burdened, right? And, if you are used to being home, are taking a job break, or academic break from your life, you might still feel like a crap right now because you are not used to so many people at home hovering, right? And, if you are away from home, it adds more pain because you are missing everyone. Well, coming to the point, no matter what was your situation before lockdown or COVID-19 situation, you feel like your precious time is being wasted.

 

Some countries like China & Italy faced or have been facing a lot of horrible experience with this virus outbreak. But, it is not a person or a weapon that can be put to an end, it’s something microscopic, something so powerful that only option we are left with is staying indoors and taking a lot of precautions with hygiene and while coming in contact with another person. I’m not here to talk about COVID-19 in detail, let’s get back to my blog title.

I’ve been indoors for two weeks now, but guess what? I have not found it difficult to spend my time. Though my classes are off & I cannot hit the gym, so my regular schedule has changed drastically, but I’m still working from home (office work), doing freelancing (paid contents), sketching (a lot), reading novels ( a lot), and watching few movies. On top of all, I have been writing a lot of blogs too.  I’ve always been a hobby-person (if there’s a term like that), so excess free time never bothered me anyway. Though I travel a lot, and in fact, before this lockdown, I travelled five new districts, and made two treks, this lockdown has not bothered me at all!

So let’s talk about YOUR hobbies. Well, if you tell something like you always wanted to learn a guitar, or a drum, then it might be difficult because you might not find it at this time because of lockdown stores are shutdown, but if you can manage it somehow, you can do that too (never let anyone believe that you cannot do something, not even your dad – dialog by Will Smith from movie The Pursuit of Happyness )

It’s okay if you could not think of any hobbies. Actually, when there’s enough free time, you can build hobbies. This is your time. Again, sketching or painting also requires painting colors, pencil & sketchbook at least, which you might not have, so, we will be talking about many options that you can do!

Do not complain that you just have a smart phone! Because you can do several things with a simple smart phone too! Let’s begin with enormous possibilities now!

Reorganizing Your Room:

Staying all day in that room, it might have started to bother you, hasn’t it? So, before catching any hobby (LOL, it sounds like catching feelings), lets reorganize the room! If you have just few furniture, still give it a go. After all, everyone has that little interior designer soul inside. And, with new interior comes new ideas. But, if the room looks perfectly fine, and you are as lazy as me to lift a furniture, simply skip this point.

Watching Movies:

Well, you might be laughing at this point, right? You might be wondering – “Come on girl, all I have been doing all my lockdown weeks is watching movies, and you are suggesting the same thing again?” Well, watching movies and watching good movies can be two different things. No matter what genre, some movies are not to be missed. If you have always been fan of comedy or romance, then this is the perfect time for you to switch your taste. I can suggest you some of the nice movies I have watched. And, if you have watched all of these and think you know some better movies than these, let us know in the comment section.  

Freedom Writers (2007), 12 Years A Slave (2014), Adrift, The Terminal (2004), Taken [1, 2, 3], Apocalypto (2006), Captain Phillips 2013), Wonder (2017), The Impossible (2012), The Pursuit of Happyness, Bohemian Rhapsody, What’s eating Gilbert Grape (1993), The king’s Speech, Soaked up in bleach, The Kite Runner, Into The Wild (2007), Django Unchained

Reading Books:

If you are a regular book reader, you might be enjoying the lockdown time reading books. If your available books are over, you can down AnyBooks app (for android users) to download plenty of online books and read it.

If you are not very fond of reading books, this is the perfect time to give it a try. Sometimes we do not like doing something because we have set our mind that way. And, that becomes reality. So, try reading a book, may be a nice fiction book like The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom which I read 10 days back. Some more fiction books I read this week & did not regret are – Hiipie by Paulo Coelho & The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

For some more fiction related book suggestion, here you go: The Kite Runner – Khaleed Hossaini, A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaleed Hossaini, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams, A Good Woman – Danielle Steels, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey,

For short books suggestions: The Old Man & The Sea – Ernest Hemingway, The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint, The Vegetarian – Han Kang

Coding:

If you ever had this thing on mind, this is the best time. You are surely habituated to looking at your phone or PC for hours, right? Then, you can give it a try to coding. There are plenty of apps and online courses available. You need not have to have a background of IT to learn it. Simply take help from Youtube & begin it. If it interests you, you can learn basic and later on after lockdown is over, take actual classes. There is a huge scope of freelancing in this field, so if it interests you, you will shine.

Alternative To Something You Don’t Have:

I mentioned in one of the paragraphs above to stop dreaming about adopting hobbies like playing drum at this lockdown because you might not have it, right? Well, there are plenty of virtual apps that can help you defeat that. If you want to learn some instrument, you can start with basic through smart phone apps. For example, for drums there is Real Drums as shown in picture below. Go conquer your dreams!

Easy-Peasy Crafts:

• 

• 

I know craft is not everyone’s cup of tea. Don’t you remember good times before lockdown when you had beers, Netflix & chilled? Where are the beer bottles now? How about painting them? If you get enough acrylic paints, you can paint the beer bottles and try to remember good times. This can later on, be your flower vase and be a décor of living room or bedroom. You will look at it, and remember how you did not waste your lockdown days! This is just one suggestion with craft. You can create your own bookmarks for the books like in picture and remember those days when you could hit the library and enjoy smell of old books! If craft interests you, Google it, and booooom you get everything along with easy tutorials in YouTube!

Series:

I’m not a series-person to be honest because my days past by watching at laptop screen during both my jobs so I hardly want to watch screen besides my job time, hence, not watching series. But I know most of us are fond of watching series. If you have managed time for other productive things mentioned above, then you can always have refreshment. This one is a cheat-point. So, here my friend Anjan Dhungana has to suggest you with series!  

Narcos, Chernobyl, The Witcher, Altered Carbon, Mr. Robot, Band of Brothers, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, Vikings

He says that you shall not regret going through these series, but do check out the trailer.

Hope you enjoyed going through the content and it was helpful in some ways to some of you. If you are just switching between apps like Facebook – Snapchat – Instagram, then it is time to adopt some new habits that might help you in some ways!

Let’s wish this pandemic to end soon and we all get back to our regular lives once again. It has taught us how important it is to adopt hobbies, and we will be doing it this time, right?

Aleena Rayamajhi
4/2/2020