"I'm so f****** bored": what to do during quarantine

This quarantine stuff really sucks, doesn’t it? You can’t (or shouldn’t) leave your house, see your friends, go to school, or work, or the gym. You can’t really do anything you’re used to doing. And you definitely can’t study abroad in Spain.

Friday, March 20, 2020 marks my fifth day in quarantine. I got back to Boston from Spain just before midnight on Sunday, and so far, I haven’t exhibited any symptoms of COVID-19. While you could have the virus for up to 14 days without showing symptoms, this study found that the median incubation period for COVID-19 is 5.1 days. In other words, it looks like I’m in the clear. Hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself.

While I would 1,000,000% rather be in Spain than at home in quarantine, it hasn’t been too bad so far. I gave myself 2 days to relax after my trip home, and then I started to work back into things. I’ve actually been pretty productive over the past few days, and that’s the best way to get through this. Be productive. Do something.

Disclaimer: This is going to be one of my longest posts. In it, I list 9 things you could be doing during your quarantine at home. You might already be doing some, or all, of these things, or you might have decided not to do any of them. This post is on the longer side because I wanted to explain the benefit of each of the 9 things in case you, fans of Mitch Rose Blog, want some background information or need a little convincing, a little persuasion. Or maybe you’re already doing these things, and you want validation that you’re on the right track. Either way, I bolded and underlined each tip so you can scan the post in 2 minutes and be done with it, but I thoroughly explained each one so you could also spend 10 minutes of your indefinite coronacation understanding how and why you can make it suck a little less. So without further ado, here are Mitch Rose Blog’s 9 tips to make your quarantine a productive and healthy substitute for the typical hustle and bustle of your life.

Exercise: get outside!

You might be wondering, given the current situation, whether or not you can even go outside in the first place. The answer? Yes, you can. And if you’re wondering exactly where you can go or what you can do right now, this article breaks down the situation well.

Exercising outside is especially important during this quarantine period because you’re likely spending most of the day in your home. This exercise could be anything: walking, running, shooting baskets, throwing the football, playing with your dog. This FoxNews article outlines the following benefits of outdoor exercise: natural Vitamin D, improved mood and a sense of calm, increased creativity, enhanced digestion, healthier blood pressure and heart rate, and, like I mentioned, a break from the indoors.

A couple other things: if you’re unable to workout like you usually do, especially if it’s in a gym, you might be worried about the impact on your progress. In short, you will “lose progress” in about two weeks if you decrease your exercise to basically nothing. But that doesn’t have to happen. Use whatever dumbbells, benches, bars, anything you have to workout and give you the distraction you need. Don’t have dumbbells? Just throw some stuff into a duffel bag and create your own, or do bodyweight exercises like pushups, crunches, burpees, squats, lunges, etc. You might not make any progress with pushups or duffel bag dumbbells, but you could maintain the progress you’ve already made.

Last point on exercise: wondering how you can further protect yourself from COVID-19? Running in general improves your respiratory health and prevents you from getting seasonal colds and other illnesses of the like, and thus, it has the same effect for COVID-19. So if you’ve been running outside and drinking plenty of water (that’s really important too!), you’re on the right track.

FaceTime friends and family

This one may seem obvious, but it’s more important now than ever to stay connected with your friends and family. I know this is probably pretty obvious too, but there are multiple links between social isolation and mental illnesses, like depression. While texting and social media are decent ways to stay connected with people, a study mentioned in the article I link to above found that video chatting was far more effective in reducing the feeling of social isolation.

This article from the LA Times is really solid and gives you a variety of platforms on which you can virtually hangout with friends or family, such as FaceTime, Skype, Google Duo/Hangout, or Zoom. It also suggests what you can do on those video chats, including happy hour (I did this with my friends on Wednesday, it was really fun), dinner, karaoke, video games, board games, social/drinking games, phone games, or a Netflix watch party (here’s how to set that up).

Piedmont Healthcare, one of the largest health systems in America, lists 4 basic benefits of friends and family in this article. First of all, they provide an excellent outlet to cope with stress, which is surely abundant as we wonder how long this corona-ightmare (I tried to mix "corona" and "nightmare;" let me know if it worked) will continue. Piedmont also writes that friends and family “lengthen your life” by enhancing episodic memory and cognitive functions, while lowering allostatic load (the gradual wear and tear on the body and mind from being stressed). Friends and family also improve your “psychological well-being” by giving you a stronger sense of purpose or meaning in life. Finally, they can be beneficial for your cardiovascular health by, you guessed it, lowering stress. High stress can cause inflamed arteries, and a study mentioned in the article found that people discussing challenges in their life had a lower pulse and blood pressure with a friend by their side. So pickup your phone and FaceTime grandma, or your buddies, or both, and toast a glass of wine to your lowered allostatic load.

Support local businesses

While college students, like me, are complaining about not being at school (or in Spain), small businesses may be the hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis. According to this article by MarketWatch, most small businesses only have enough assets to stay open for 45 days due to income being reduced by 90% in some cases.

What can you do? Although restaurants and bars have been closed to the public, many are still open for takeout or delivery. Additionally, gift cards are a perfect way to pay businesses now and cash in later if you don’t want their product at the moment. For example, a company called Kabbage just launched a gift-certificate platform for small businesses that offers certificates of $15 to $500 (it’s a pretty cool story; they collaborated with a few other tech companies and a group of 100 workers built the platform in 3 days). So get out of the house, go for a drive, and grab some food or a gift card from your favorite local establishment.

Write

You knew this one was coming. Since I started writing last summer, I’ve become a huge advocate for how much it helps you. My mom used to make me write a journal every summer when I was growing up, and while it was probably beneficial in some ways, her forcing it upon me made me look down upon writing “for fun.” But I’ve since discovered that I love writing, and it’s made a major difference in my life.

The benefits:

You’ll be happier & handle hardships more effectively: research has shown that expressive writing, or writing about what you think and how you feel, has therapeutic benefits resulting in improved mood and reduced stress levels. This could come in handy in lowering your stress while we’re all cooped up at home, but it will help you overcome future challenges as well. For example, 63 engineers who recently lost their jobs were put into 3 groups: a control group that did nothing different, a control group that wrote about time management, and a third group that wrote expressively. Eight months later, 52% of the engineers in the expressive writing group were reemployed, versus only 19% for the control groups. Perhaps more importantly, the expressive writing group reported less anger and hostility towards their former employer, less alcohol consumption, and higher quality interviews. In other words, expressive writing didn’t get the expressive writers more interviews, it increased their performance in the interviews, making them more likely to get hired.

You’ll communicate more clearly: when you write, you likely use more sophisticated words or phrases and think through what you’re going to say before you say it. If you really want to read about how writing improves your communication (oral too, not just written), click here. If not, I’ll give you a super quick synopsis: writing helps develop memory networks that your brain taps into when making a response or choice. And the more extensive your memory networks, the more successful your brain will be in making the right decision.

You’ll comprehend your own thoughts better: while becoming a better communicator will help you understand your own thoughts in that they’ll be expressed more clearly, writing them down is also beneficial because it simply prevents you from forgetting ideas you have. Think about having a million tabs open on your computer: your browser runs much quicker with fewer open, and so too will your mind once you get your ideas down on paper.

You’ll learn more: I mentioned this in my last post as well, but writing has definitely made me more inclined and open to learning. Since starting my blog, I’ve begun to seek out opportunities to learn, whether that be reading articles or books, watching movies or videos, or listening to songs, or podcasts or the radio. What’s more, when you write about something you learned, it sticks in your mind far more than if you didn’t write about it. We all have a hell of a lot of time on our hands right now, so why not spend it getting smarter?

Apply for jobs

Although it feels like this period of self-imprisonment could last forever, it won’t. So, my fellow broke college students, or anyone else that needs a little extra cash, apply for jobs! Whether it’s an opportunity that will only be available after life returns to normal or one that’s possible now, take a shot at that internship you covet or drop a quick application for Starbucks. In fact, my sister just applied to Chipotle last Friday and had her “interview” on Monday: she was in and out of the store in 15 minutes with a burrito bowl and a job that starts next week.

Invest in the stock market

Want to make some extra money but don’t want to leave your house? Invest in the stock market. Robinhood is a super easy-to-use service that lets you get started on the day you create your account, and all of your stock trades are commission-free (you don’t have to pay to buy or sell stock).

Wait, you don’t know anything about stocks? Here’s some good news. Three things. One: you have plenty of time to learn about them. This gives you something to do! Two: you don’t really need to know much about stocks to make money off the stock market. You may have heard this phrase before: “invest in what you know.” Here’s a hypothetical in a vacuum to illustrate my point: let’s say you know everything there is to know about Tesla. Right now, it’s trading at about $430 per share. Let’s also say that you've heard Tesla will announce better-than-expected earnings for Q1 of 2020. You know this announcement is coming, and when it does, Tesla’s price will skyrocket. So, being a Tesla expert with some common sense, you buy 100 shares of Tesla stock before the announcement. Then, when Tesla shoots up to $530 per share after it releases its earnings, you sell your 100 shares for a $100 profit on each share. Congrats! You just made $10,000 (before taxes, sorry). In other words, if you think a stock is overvalued, you sell it, and if you think it’s undervalued, you buy it. Then you rake in the cash. And finally, number three: because the market is down to historic lows due to coronavirus, now marks possibly the best time in a generation to buy solid stocks, like airline stocks, for cheap. The airline industry isn’t going anywhere no matter how bleak the near future is, so if you buy now, you can cash in when life is back to normal.

Play video games

You probably don’t need me to tell you that you could play video games while you’re stuck at home. For example, Italy has seen a 70% increase in traffic on one of its networks that is directly attributed to a dramatically higher usage of games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.

But maybe you need me to tell you that you should play video games. You got time, why not? This article can explain the benefits in great detail, but this one breaks it down a little more simply. Video games can improve your visual, audial, and physical coordination, enhance problem-solving and multi-tasking skills along with attention, concentration, and memory, and quicken your brain’s processing speed. Even more interestingly, and this applies the most directly to our coronavirus issue, studies have shown that video games can help relieve pain. Video games have been found to provide psychological and physical therapy for patients, distracting them from whatever injury, mental illness, or trauma they may have experienced. So pick up Madden, or GTA, or Minecraft, and get lost!

Read/watch movies

I’m sure pretty much everyone has read something or watched at least part of a movie during quarantine, and the benefits are very similar to those of video games, so I’ll keep this section short. Movies can stimulate an emotional release, improve our mood, distract us from current problems, and bring about a sense of relief, while also enhancing motivation, creativity, personal relationships, and positive thinking. Reading offers all of the same benefits and also improves your vocabulary, writing ability, and helps you sleep.

Learn a new skill

Depending on how bored you are, you could go really all-in on this quarantine debacle and teach yourself a new language or how to play an instrument. Or maybe you want to learn how to cook better. Or maybe now you can finally start meditating. Whatever you want to do, do it. You have plenty of time.

So if you're bored, please do something. That’s the whole point of this post: to give you, my readers, some encouragement, some motivation, some hope, that you can make something positive out of this ridiculousness. Use the extra time you have to your advantage. Don’t let yourself waste away into coronavirus oblivion. Because if we can give ourselves some purpose during quarantine, if we can give meaning to each day we’re stuck at home, then ‘rona doesn’t stand a chance.