Revamp Your Coronavirus Routine to Avoid Burnout
It’s OK to work longer hours as long as you’re breaking off chunks of time for exercise, errands, and family.
Up until now, we’ve been living a simulacrum of our pre-Covid-19 lives. But two months into the marathon pandemic, our previous frameworks are crumbling under the stresses of adapting to a world in which unprecedented numbers of people are losing their livelihoods and lives. We have to figure out how to get through the day and absorb that stress without letting it overwhelm us. Some pointers on rejiggering your routine to do that:
The big idea. “You want to mitigate the effects of this collective trauma,” says Joyce Dorado, a psychiatry professor at the University of California at San Francisco who’s worked with people in distress for 30 years. “That chronic, long-term stress of a looming threat can wear down our brains and our bodies, and we need to address it.” Translation: Your usual cocktail of busyness, overwork, and denial won’t cut it.