These are some ideas i have about surviving the first three days of hometivity!

And just like that, South Africa was in lockdown.

Today is Friday, and my advice for the first three days is quite simple.

Let today be a day of slowing down – it’s likely been a bit of a hectic week with rushing around and trying to get everything ready for the next few weeks. Be gentle with yourself and those you might be staying with and let today be a day of breathing it all in.

# Write down five things you are grateful for – big or small.

# Have a meal with the people you will be spending this time with and invite each person to check in – how are they feeling about the time ahead? What feels exciting? What is scary? What is one thing they most want to achieve or learn or have done during this time? If you are going to be by yourself during this time, perhaps you can think of someone else who is by themselves and message them and do a screen check-in.

# Have a hot drink and just be. Whether you’re a coffee, tea or hot chocolate person [if none of those, grab a glass of water] grab your drink of choice and drink it slowly while you just be.

Don’t make today a day of planning or trying to figure out the rest of the 21 days. Let today be about slow transition. If you have young children create a space for them to ask questions and share feelings and maybe draw something that is on their mind or hearts. Connect with those around you. Have some significant screen-free moments during the day. Turn off the news and the numbers and the anxiety that those can bring – just for a bit of a break.

Day Two and Three

Remember that today is Friday and so the next two days are weekend. As much as possible, let them stay that. Apart from the fact that you can’t leave the house, do what you would normally do on the weekend. Or find a creative alternative at your place of lockdown, as much as possible.

Leave the serious business of lockdown focus for day four and beyond. A day to transition followed by a weekend and then let Monday be the slightly delayed start to the real new normal.

tips on surviving corona virus lockdown

Day 4 and beyond

When it comes to Monday [and this is something to think of today and on the weekend] start the lockdown well. Some of you will still have work to do and so in a lot of ways this might feel like a normal work week but just in a different context. But many of you will not and this time will be about doing the best you can do at home.

If you sink into bad habits from the beginning [eight hours of series bingeing per day] then that will likely set the tone for the rest of the lockdown and will likely not get any better. So start strongly.

i wrote a post talking about some of the disciplines i will be focusing on [which you can read here] and my encouragement to you before Monday is to decide on some of these [or others of your own liking] to put in place from the get go. Ones i mentioned were exercise, reading, writing and study [with food and games as two bonus disciplines] and my wife Val would have gardening in there as well as some others.

If you plan to do these in the next three days and get started with them once Monday comes, then the hope is that disciplines will become habits in the eighteen days that follow. And if these are positive habits, then by the time we get to leave and return to some kind of normal, hopefully they will have stuck with you.

For those of you with small children [and some of these will be good for teenagers and even maybe yourself] with the help of a number of parents and online spaces i have put together this blog post with literally hundreds of ideas for children, both online and offline. And if that is not enough then there is a second blog post with another ridiculous amount of activities and websites where children can do a bunch of fun and educational things. You might want to spend part of your weekend working through these posts and choosing a few activities for the week.

You got this! We got this!

i know that is easy to say for someone in my position. There are literally millions of people in this country who have it worse than me right now. Many for whom surviving such a time [for a multitude of reasons] might seem close to impossible. So this time in lockdown is going to be so much harder [and much more dangerous] for many people in our country. We need to remember that and hopefully find ways to share our much with those who really are struggling right now.

But i hope for those of you who read this, that this helps a little bit. i really believe that for those of us who can take today a little slower and then have a bit of a weekend while planning whatever disciplines we would like to include in our daily routine, that this will provide a strong time to this enforced lockdown period.

One last thing at this time is to please spend some time today or this weekend thinking about the vulnerable people in your life. This might be people staying by themselves right now, this might be the elderly, this might be people you know who have mental health issues, it might be marriages you know that are struggling or even people that are now in lockdown with their abusers… Send a message, make phone call, drop a voice note… reach out to them in some way. Let them know your line is open if they need to talk or connect or set up a regular time to check-in just to see how they are doing.

Let’s try and make it through this lockdown time, but let’s do it together. As much as possible. Not so much just surviving, but thriving!

[For a post looking at how your character and integrity are doing during corona, click here]