Stop. Pandemic Time. 3 ways to work smarter, live healthier and be happier during COVID-19 lockdown.

Ding.

It's Mid-March, 2020. A Google Calendar notification flashes up on my iPhone as I'm putting on my socks.

"EMERGENCY MEETING. MANDATORY. 8-8:30 am"

We all diligently file into the Zoom meeting. Some of us are still at home, others are already in the office, sipping coffee and waving at people offscreen.

"As you all know, we are currently living under unprecedented circumstances. As such, as a business, we're implementing a global work from home policy effective immediately. Anyone in the office or on their way, make your way home as soon as you feel safe to do so. Anyone still at home, stay in place. I don't know when this is going to be lifted."

Work has changed. Forever.

At WP Engine, while working from home was never actively discouraged, it was never seen as a primary work environment, nor was it supported to be. I would guess that this would have been the case for the majority of businesses in Australia and around the world as well.

As social creatures, it was nice to be able to see your team face to face, collaborate in person, and share meals together. When we all entered that first lockdown, I believed that we'd get back to that state soon after it all blew over. What an idiot.

Work has changed. Forever.

At WP Engine we rapidly pivoted to a virtual first workplace as the new normal. Like building new muscle memory, it was an arduous affair.

World War II rearranged the global power structures in ways that we are still grappling with. In 50 years we'll be talking about how COVID-19 rearranged economies in the same ways even as it becomes consigned to an annual flu we get a shot for.

At the macro level, housing prices have exploded globally, as workers have started fleeing central business districts; massive demand for home office equipment and more comfortable cars to commute in have created a long lasting chip shortage; central banks have begun reassessing what inflation means for an economy; and businesses have had to rethink how they operate in a contactless world, with many not able to make that leap.

For us as creatives, developers, marketers, engineers, and digital professionals, we are lucky that we have been insulated from a lot of the physical consequences of lockdowns and restrictions by working at home. But this change has led to different stressors:

• The inability to separate workspace from homespace, especially for those of us in inner city apartments (which I used to be).
• Lacking human contact. Virtual drinks turn out to be a pretty poor substitute and I haven't seen my mum in nearly 18 months.
• Never being able to turn off. Stress and rapid change at work, has combined with the stress and rapid change stemming from the constant restrictions and lockdowns of the pandemic.
• What was once a very structured workday has become a meandering muddle. Routine is difficult to maintain.
• Zoom burnout, where we used to have to build in buffer time around meetings, we now find ourselves sitting at our desks for hours and hours at a time attending back to back Zoom meetings, a consequence of trying to stay "more connected".
• Balancing home responsibilities with work responsibilities. There's a reason why we drop kids off at school every day.

It's no coincidence that, in the US, there has been a 400% increase in individuals reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression and in China, a country where mental health has historically been dismissed as a "bourgeoisie concept", draconian lockdowns, combined with the already existing stress of working 996, has led to an unprecedented boom in the mental health industry and an openness to discuss anxiety and depression like never before.

I'll admit, I haven't been subject to all of the above stresses (I don't have children), and I'm not a licensed mental health professional, but here are 3 ways that I was able deal with the stress and anxiety of working during the pandemic. Everyone's situation is unique, but hopefully, some of you might find some use:

1. Physical health and mental health are one and the same.

The most impactful and immediate thing you can do right now for your mental health is to take care of your physical health.

I was never one who put health first. My favourite food was pizza. When I was younger I was proud of my ability to sit down and single mindedly play one video game for thousands of hours at a time. When I got older, I was proud of my workaholic ability to work 7 days straight with less than 3 hours sleep a day for weeks on end. It wasn't until my doctor told me I was going to die an early death and then asked me, for the second time, whether I wanted to take insulin injections as there was no going back after that, that I took my health seriously.

Obviously, very few of you are in a similar situation, but hopefully, you won't have to reach a similar situation before you make a change.

It's easy for people to tell you, oh, you should exercise; you should eat better; you should sleep more. But for someone who had lived a life of excess these seemed like vast, unapproachable goals.

Instead, what I found worked for me was a change in mindset:

• Understand that health is a lifelong pursuit. This is a marathon with no end. Not a sprint.
• Understand that progress is gradual. You aren't going to turn into Chris Hemsworth overnight, nor is that healthy.
• Understand that everyone's health journey is unique. Your health is an N=1 situation. Just like I didn't blindly follow the advice of the nearest Gym Shark influencer, you shouldn't follow my advice blindly either.
• Be real with yourself and learn to appreciate yourself. Noone is genetically perfect. I know that I have a family history of some pretty serious health issues. Does that mean it's all pointless? No. Just because I am never going to be as ripped and diced as a Mr. Olympia, doesn't mean I shouldn't aim to be the best version of myself. Giving up on yourself like that is like saying, just because you won't one day be a Nobel laureate in physics, you shouldn't bother going to school. Noone is perfectly good at everything, just like no one is perfectly bad at anything.
• Learn (from peer reviewed scientific sources or as close to that as you can find - fitness experts worth listening to I've found are Greg Doucette, the Buff Dudes, Jeff Nippard, and Dr. Mike Israetel) as much as you can about nutrition, the metabolic processes that break your food down and convert it into usable material in your body, how your muscles work, and proper technique when exercising so you don't, basically, hurt yourself. When you understand this, you instinctively act in ways that give you the best outcome, because you understand the whats and whys of the worst outcome.
• Understand your TDEE and get MyFitnessPal so you can truly understand what is going into your body and how you are using it. It also allows you to set realistic but quantifiable goals, whether it is to lose, gain or maintain weight (don't get pedantic about it, understand that this should only be used as a cueing influence, you don't literally know you ingested 2538 kCal in a day, that is, unless you live in a clinical metabolic chamber).
• Most importantly, start small and build. I started by simply exchanging the time I would take after work vegging out on the couch watching Youtube to strolling around a nearby park... while still watching Youtube (you'd be amazed how long you can walk without feeling it if you're distracted by a Youtube video). Another small change might be to switch from full cream milk to light and then skim milk, and switching your sugar intake to sugarfree options (stevia/monkfruit is an amazing substitute). Eventually these small "micro-practices" become habit, and before you know it, you are doing quarter marathons as a warmup before hitting the gym (or maybe not).

It has long been scientifically shown (here, and here included) and widely accepted that not only does exercise help alleviate stress and anxiety, but it also is one of the single best things you can do to improve your cognitive ability, and protect your brain from deterioration later in life.

2. Be intentional about your time.

Every Monday morning, before I get into my first meeting I always spend the time to look over my calendar, and write down important work and personal engagements in my diary.

I budget my time.

While it's important to budget your money so you can improve your finances by getting the information you need to tweak spending and saving and lots of people do just this, it's just as important to budget your time so you can understand what you're spending it on, and where you can save it.

Except, it's more important.

While there is the age old adage of "time equals money", it doesn't really, because time is necessarily finite. Once you spend a minute, you can't magically make more minutes appear. You are 1 minute out of pocket that you're never ever getting back.

Once you truly understand how finite time is, you will want to value your own time, and, importantly, not be an ass and also value the time of others (don't be the person who dumps things in people's calendars without asking because "it's really important to you", when in reality you could learn to do it yourself with some research, but, of course, your time is more valuable than theirs... Yeah, right...).

So, budget your time. Quite literally. Like a balance sheet.

Chris Do, an agency guy who actually has valuable things to say, has a great video on an exercise he does for just that.

But if you haven't done this before, it can seem intimidating:

• Start with a calendar app. Google Calendar is free and basically everyone uses it so it integrates with a lot of things.
• List out your "Must Do's", your priority tasks for the week somewhere separate, for example, I put it in my diary before the "Monday" section.
• At the start of your week look over your calendar to get "the lay of the land". Find out what isn't necessary and can either be eliminated or delegated. Then do that.
• Literally block out time for tasks, whether they are part of your "Must Do" tasks, or BAU tasks like logging activities, or checking emails.
• Also block out time for personal tasks, such as meditation, exercise, lunch, 101 time with your partner(!). Your (and their) needs are important too.

Once you are comfortable with budgeting time, then you can begin thinking about measuring and optimising it.

For that, I turn to the Pomodoro Technique.

Over time you can measure how effectively you use your time (or each unit of pomodoro) and where you can allocate more or less of it.

3. Be mindful. Always.

Just as physical exercise is important for mental health, actual mental health exercises are also important for mental health.

It's a natural reaction during a once in a century event like a pandemic for there to be so much general anxiety, fear and stress.

Mindfulness helps us acknowledge this, acknowledge the emotion associated, but also acknowledge the counterpoints, and understand what we can and cannot control.

Those that are mentally strong expend mental energy on meaningful things and what they can affect, and let go of things that aren't meaningful and what they cannot affect.

The science backs this up. Recent research at Yale has illustrated how mindfulness can help reduce the incidence of illness and anxiety associated with it. One recent study involved recruiting people who had never meditated, teaching them to be mindful in a moment, and studying the effects of doing so on the brain. The effect was so pronounced that when participants were practicing mindfulness and subjected to physical pain (in this case, the application of heat to their forearm that was intense enough to cause pain, but not burn them), their brains responded as if they were experiencing a lower, less intense temperature.

I set 15 minutes every day during the work week at 2PM exactly (this is around the time that I find my energy and mood tend to drop or experience a lull) to drop everything and cultivate mindfulness.

If you haven't done it before it's worthwhile priming yourself prior to any form of meditation. That means:

• Practicing non-judgment.
• Being patient. Just like going to the gym, progress is gradual, sometimes imperceptibly so.
• Being open minded. Don't assume to know everything. In fact, the smartest of us know that we know nothing.
• If you need guidance there are plenty of apps to help, for example, Calm and Headspace. You could even follow some guided meditation on Youtube or Spotify to get started.

While practicing mindfulness,

• Pay attention to what is happening right here, right now. It can be within, like how you might feel your lungs expand while your breathe in, or external to you, like the weather, the seat you sit on, or the street outside.
• Trust and accept your inner self and stay with any experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant. The historical hetero-normative machismo associated with being "manly" i.e. the ability to shove one's feelings deep deep deep deep down inside oneself, otherwise known as Toxic Masculinity, does tremendous psychological harm.
• Accept what will be, will be, and let go of what we wish something could be. This also means seeing the counterpoint of that, for example, as frustrating as a lockdown might be, you can be thankful that you can spend more meaningful time with your partner.

The Yale Stress Center and it's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction?(MBSR) course also illustrates some other tools to keep in mind:

• Every day, for a couple of minutes once or twice throughout the day, put down whatever you're doing. Close your eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths while focusing on the sensation of air going in your nose and out again. If you can at home, do this outside.
• My favourite method of medication is to initiate a body scan by sitting or lying down, closing your eyes, and slowly visualising in your mind your body from head to toe, focusing on how each part of your body is feeling without judging or trying to adjust anything.
• Practice S. T. O. P. - this is an acronym that stands for?Stop,?Take a breath,?Observe your feelings, and?Proceed.
• Practice R. A. I. N. - which stands for?Recognising what is here, Allowing it rather than pushing it away, Investigating where in your body you are experiencing this difficulty, and Nourishing yourself by soothing the discomfort.

These are 3 ways in which I have dealt with the stressors of the rapidly changing pandemic induced work environment we all live within now, and how, it's not all bad. Sometimes it's just a matter of changing one's mindset to seeing it as another opportunity. Maybe it will work for you like it has for me, maybe it won't. Worth a try though?

Robert is a Senior Solutions Engineer at WP Engine, the world's largest WordPress platform, and an ex-startup founder, ex-film maker, and has a PhD in Media and Communications. He is an admitted workaholic and reformed gamer who's idea of a good time is lifting iron for two hours at a time. Find him at robertli.co.