Four things that made my life better in quarantine

About four months have already been passed since I started to work from home completely.
Looking back, Working remotely in quarantine was not an easy fit for me. I felt down sometimes.
Currently, I am totally good and have gotten used to working remotely.
In this article, I would like to share four things that worked for me to improve the situation.

Sleep more than 7 hours

It’s essential for both physical and mental healths. I found out that 7 hours is a minimum requirement for me to make my brain work during the day.
I tracked daily sleeping quality with AutoSleep app on Apple Watch to figure out minimum criteria.

Don’t drink alcohol on weekdays

First few months of remote work, I swallowed a lot of alcohol.
That made my life unproductive. It even impacted my daily work output.
Because of that, I wasted a lot of time for the first few months.
Looking back, I did nothing.
And that made me feel bad and drink alcohol. That was a bad loop.
I made a simple rule for myself to stop this downward spiral.
Don’t drink alcohol on weekdays except for Friday.
I shared this rule with my wife and also started to record, “Don’t drink alcohol on weekdays” habit on habitify.
So far, It has been working well. I stop drinking on weekdays, and I restarted to write a blog, write codes, and solve problems on LeetCode.
And the rule makes beers I can drink on Friday awesome. haha

Stay away from social media

Social media could be toxic sometimes, especially when there is tons of sad news.
I knew that it did not work well for me but could not stop reading tweets related to sad news.
To avoid wasting time by reading tweets, I set a screen time rule on iOS to allow me to use Twitter for only 15 mins a day.
The rule certainly changed my routine in the morning. After applying my own rule, I no longer open Twitter first thing in the morning. Instead, I open Nikkei news app or Podcast to listen to NHK news.
A good point on this rule is that I can feel that I have control in using social media and social media do not distract me.

Spending time with family

At last, but most notable was a time with my wife and son.
There are no venues or events we can go to in quarantine.
What we did on weekends was a walk. We just had 2 hours’ walk around our town every weekend. We talked about life, my son, jobs, and a lot of silly stuff.
That was a lovely time made me refresh.

That’s it. Stay safe.