For most of 2020, we were faced with adopting preventative measures in order to diminish risk of infection. This has given rise to many challenges and deprivations in our quotidian routines. Over time, social isolation and uncertainty about the future have led to an overall decline of psychological health. Especially with the cold season approaching, we are susceptible to even further deterioration of our sense of self.
However, not all is lost! It is possible to hack your surroundings, routine, social life and even your own brain while simultaneously accommodating necessary health requirements.
Hack your surroundings – the right environment for productivity
Encapsulating all genuine human interaction within the borders of technology has derailed the way we experience university. Many students complain about lower levels of productivity, issues with information retention and concentration when not being able to physically attend lectures. Here are some tips on how to create the right surroundings when being stuck at home all day.
Separation and Variation
You probably have one desk at which you spend hours doing all of your home-official endeavours. Instead of centralising and limiting all your activity to one location, it could prove beneficial creating tangible separations for various tasks. This may help your brain to properly associate your environment with a given assignment.
Our brain loves categorising – each bit of information we perceive through our sensory input gets broken into smaller components and redirected to respective groups of neurons which are specialised in processing them. You could use different means to try and recreate such diverse patterns externally:
© Cayla Silbermann
Alternate locations. You could start by assigning different areas of your room or apartment to reoccurring tasks. For instance, if you have a paper to read and e-lectures to attend, you could set up a chair near a window for reading the paper, while using the desk exclusively for lectures.
Assigning locations to different tasks does not have to be limited to the boundaries of your room – you can use the kitchen table for studying, living room TV for lectures, or even the quiet minutes in the bathroom for memorising vocabulary – be creative.
Make sure to alternate your surroundings regularly, or else you’ll end up sitting in the same spot for hours on end. How could anyone concentrate like that?
Small living space? As victims of the Innsbruck real estate madness, many of us are forced to cram their existence into a small amount of square metres. In this case, you can try creating “neural partitions” by trying to set up exclusive elements which you only use for specific tasks. If you consequently use these elements only for the tasks you assign them to, your brain might begin associating these external stimuli with the corresponding re-occurring activity.
For instance, if you struggle concentrating and slipping into a productive state of mind during e-lectures, you could try setting up a lamp next to your laptop, which you only turn on when attending lectures and not for anything else. Studies have concluded that cool LED light is more efficient for alertness and attentiveness which might prove beneficial for lectures or studying.
You could even go as far as having a sweater or pants which you explicitly only wear for studying. Or, in case you have a diffuser, you could try to use some “operant conditioning” on your olfactory senses by using a selected smell for times you need to study. Rosemary has come up in a few studies in regard to memory retention.
Remember, practice makes perfect – repetition leads to strengthened connections between neurons. If certain connections are not used regularly, they begin to deteriorate.
Hack your routine – plan and diversify your schedule
Even if they may appear limiting, repetitive structures and routine will give you a sense of direction when you’re stuck at home all day.
Timetables
Schedule your time ahead. This includes setting specific times for regular meals and trying to keep these consistent throughout the week. While working, try recognising signs of exhaustion and weariness and begin adding breaks into your schedule as you see fit.
An adapted variation of the pomodoro technique could prove useful in this case: spend a predetermined amount of time on one task, afterwards taking a cognitive or physical break before continuing. Sometimes even doing housechores such as washing dishes or doing laundry in between suffices as a reset.
Goals. Set yourself realistic daily and weekly goals which are achievable within the realms of your current mental state. Watch out not to overexert yourself or set your expectations too high. If you find yourself overwhelmed with tasks, try writing a to do list with only three points you want to complete in the course of your day.
Retrospection. Take time at the end of the day to sit back and make a list of positive things that happened during the day, even if it is a small achievement such as completing an assignment or petting your dog.
Diversity
While schedule, routine and structure are important, it is easy to fall into a hole of repetitiveness. Make sure to incorporate a variety of tasks into your routine which challenge you cognitively and physically and have got nothing to do with your productive obligations.
Studies have shown that mice raised in an “enriched” environment with a variety of stimuli as well as social interaction performed better on learning tasks than inactive, isolated mice did. Mental, social and physical stimulation are essential for neural growth and thus beneficial for learning. We have already spoken about how to “enrich” the surroundings. Here are two more ways on how to enrich your routine:
Physically. When your home office requires you to remain in a seated position over long periods of time, you should also find a way to alternate your posture. Use those scheduled breaks in between for doing a few stretches or yoga positions which focus on parts of your anatomy that might be negatively affected by extended periods in a seated position.
An app that could prove useful for this is Down Dog. It allows you to customise different parameters of your training according to your needs and schedule – and it is free until February 2021! In case you enjoy going for walks, try bringing some variation into the route you usually take.
Cognitively. Not only your body needs regular activity – your brain also would not mind some pleasant cognitive challenges apart from your usual obligations.
The web hosts a plethora of fascinating things to learn and do, be it languages, skills or challenges. Sure, sitting behind a screen is repetitive in itself, but the things you do on your computer do not have to be. Just make sure to switch off your “study lamp” and change your “study sweater” or to alternate your location altogether.
In case you need a screentime-break books, magazines, painting and drawing, riddles and cooking could be activities to engage other parts of your brain. Who knows, perhaps you will find yourself developing a fondness of solving jigsaw puzzles?
Hack your Social Life – Making the Best out of Virtual Interaction
Perhaps you may have been trying to compensate the lack of social interaction in real space and time by spending even more time scrolling through social media rabbit holes. While to a certain extent social media allows humans to connect through a sense of communal participation in the same fate, excessive usage can turn sour quickly.
Studies carried out in Wuhan after lock-down led to the conclusion that this excessive use causes a prevalence of depressive symptomatics. Nevertheless, while you might want to drastically limit your time on scrollable social media, you do not have to give up your virtual social life entirely – and you shouldn’t; remember the mice living in a deprived social environment?
Accountability partners. Do you struggle to find motivation for studying or completing other academic endeavours? Then having an accountability partner might just be the right thing for you! Team up with a friend and tell them what exactly you plan to achieve in a determined timeframe. You can either talk at the end of the day and show each other proof of success for completing the task or ask your friend to (virtually) drop in after certain intervals and check up on your progress.
Perhaps, for some reason, you do not feel comfortable asking a friend to have this responsibility. In this case, alternatives can be found online. Platforms such as focusmate.com offer gratuitous possibilities to be assigned an accountability partner for three sessions of 50 minutes per week. At the beginning of each session, you can communicate your plans and goals. At the end , you can update each other on the completion of your goals.
Discord Study Servers. Platforms such as discord are not only good tools for gaming purposes, but also offer the possibility to create communities (named servers), particularly for studying. Within these servers, there are different rooms for different studying needs – for instance, learning rooms for 25 minutes or for 50 minutes, with camera or without.
In case you feel like taking a break, you can simply enter the lounge and partake in the chat there, read some motivational messages by other students or just do something else. At the beginning of your study session, you are asked to specify your studying goal and to deliver updates every hour. You can also easily create your own studying server with friends.
Top: A newly made study server on discord – for smaller study groups. Bottom: A larger study server with numerous learning rooms, chat rooms, bots and users.
Hack your Thinking and Perception – Watch out for Destructive Patterns
Probably the most challenging hack of all, recognising faulty patterns of thought is no easy task. Oftentimes, we trap ourselves in our own thinking patterns, conjuring a distorted perception of our situation and the world around us. We may find ourselves ruminating and stuck in futile mental loops which negatively affect our wellbeing and thus our productivity. Recognising cognitive distortions presents the first step in actually changing them.
However, most of the time you are not immediately aware that they are occurring, so you have to spend a large amount of time observing yourself. Try keeping track of your mood (of course there’s apps for that!) and write down your exact thoughts in that moment. That way, you will become able to pinpoint which cognitive distortions have provoked a sudden change in mood or defeat. Here are a few destructive thinking patterns that may occur frequently:
Cognitive Distortions
Black and White Thinking. In this case, you may catch yourself thinking in two extremes – either good or bad but never in between. Try to think in greyscale instead. Not everything is catastrophic and while there are a lot of negative things going on, they are not all of the same severity.
Example: “Corona is the worst thing ever to happen to me, it has ruined my life, I’m a failure, society is forever ruined.” Instead: “Corona is terrible and has placed many obstacles in my way, and yes, things have become harder and it’s taking a toll on me, but I will get through this in some way – things could always be worse and it won’t be this way forever. In history, society has always emerged after crisis with different and novel perspectives.”
Rumination. Healthy thinking usually leads you to a conclusion and a plan for changing something. Rumination has no such effect; instead you are stuck in loops of thought that keep repeating themselves without leading to anywhere. If you catch yourself ruminating, make sure to break the cycle and distract yourself by doing something else.
© Cayla Silbermann
Overgeneralisation. If you are overgeneralising, you are making a conclusion based on a single incident. For example, you may catch yourself seeing a single occurrence as part of “your own bad luck” and how everything is just working against you.
External control. You may have the feeling that everything seems to be out of control. Especially during these trying times, it is easy to put the blame on an external force, such as Corona. Even so, you are often still in control in terms of how to deal with the situation. There is more you can control than you might think.
After all, we are the only ones in charge of our own well-being and thus should try not making it dependent on decisions of other people (such as the government or universities imposing new restrictions). It’s easier said than done, but it is possible alienating yourself emotionally from given circumstances.
Here you can find out more about cognitive distortions and how to fix them. More helpful articles can be found in this blog.
Tweaking your thoughts
Stop being hard on yourself. You will not be able to give 100% every day and that is alright. Just make sure you treat yourself as you would treat a friend. Give yourself the same heads up and advice. Imagine how you would handle a specific scenario if a friend came to you. Would you tell them to “suck it up” and tell them “you’re a failure, quit whining”? No. So why would you tell that to yourself?
Try distancing yourself from your own destructive thinking by acknowledging those thoughts in a more rational manner, without trying to analyse or judge them. It may not seem like much, but by creating a barrier between your negative thoughts and yourself, you may feel less affected by them as you otherwise would.
Example: “I will never be able to get over this”, Instead: “I have just noticed a thought popping up in my head, telling me I will never be able to get over this” – and move on with your day.
Expedition mindset. Astronauts are “masters of isolation” – being removed from their planetary life. Some shared a few tips on how to deal with this ongoing situation. One of these tips includes kicking your emotional alienation game up a notch by adopting an “expedition mindset”. Take scientists as an example, for whom disruptive circumstances and unusual conditions present a rare opportunity for observing changes in systemic patterns. After all, we are experiencing an exceptional year in which we get to witness how modern societal constructs react when confronted with crisis. Just make sure not to become a judge but to remain an observer.
Sick and tired of bad news? Most of the news that reach us via the media relate to negative things happening on our planet. It appears that especially now the world is teeming with bad news – being confronted with so much negativity in media will also affect your thinking. Challenge yourself to find out three good news for every single bad news you read. This website can help – it presents a weekly collection of purely good and wholesome news, be it scientific, political or social, all extracted from different news platforms.
Last but not least: Look after yourself
© Cayla Silbermann
“Have you tried switching it on and off again?” If you feel off the rails and unfocused, you can try hacking your mind by doing an activity which usually precedes productivity. That way, even though you don’t intend on leaving your home, you may feel a sensation of being “refreshed”, similar to restarting a computer.
This could include taking a shower – even if it’s in the middle of the day – going for a walk, or getting dressed up. Over time, your brain may already have gotten accustomed to these sort of rituals as a form of anticipating an activity requiring cognitive effort.
Example: Taking a shower – usually done before going to work or university to be productive. Getting dressed up – usually done before a meeting or official presentation.
Self-Care. Only because you’re at home alone all day doesn’t mean you are getting enough time for yourself – you are still slumped with responsibilities, deadlines, assignments and, on top of all, the intention of being available to everyone.
Studies conducted on medical students in the US concluded that including self-care in their routine helps in balancing out stress and improves their physical and psychological quality of life. Therefore, make sure to include activities into your routine which are rewarding to you.
Every individual is different, so naturally, everyone’s self care methods may vary greatly. Some might find solace and relaxation in writing journals, or cooking food; others in appearance. Further options could include taking a day off, or massaging your feet, have a spa day, go off-screen – or whatever else you enjoy doing.
Wellbeing. It goes without saying that your brain relies on physical (as well as cognitive) exercise, the right sustenance and enough sleep for optimized performance. When we are not feeling well, we may crave foods that are not healthy, tend to have radical changes in our sleeping patterns and perhaps cease to engage physically.
Getting Help. In case you find it difficult to cope or perhaps have a moment in which you don’t possess the mental capacity to apply the afore mentioned tips – don’t hesitate to get the help you need. You are not alone! There are numerous resources for helping you through these trying times. An example would be etherapypro.com (free!), one of many platforms connecting you to a licensed therapist online.
In Innsbruck, finding affordable professional help during these times proves to be a bit more difficult. However, you can call Nightline Innsbruck (+436607549485), a non-profit service provided by students for students, who will lend you an ear in case you’re in need of someone to talk to.
