Feeling guilty for not doing enough during lockdown? Read this.
I have to be honest; when this lockdown started and I envisioned anything from a couple of weeks to a few months of being stuck indoors, I had big visions.
You’ll see this in a previous blog post, where I confidently wrote about 20 Ideas for Coping with the Quarantine — including ideas such as learning a language, learning to sew and knit, to cook, work on your business, build a blog…
I wasn’t the only one. After I posted that article, my news feed was hit with what felt that thousands of articles suggesting that people use their time at home productively, take on a new skill, start a new side-hustle, discover a new law of physics, etc etc. One particularly striking meme that hit me one morning — I can’t find the exact one now— pointing out that Shakespeare wrote King Lear and Isaac Newton discovered calculus while they were at home during the plague. The suggestion was — what have you done, loser?
There are a couple of things we need to remember here. Firstly, nobody is even entirely convinced that William Shakespeare was one person, or at least the same person who wrote all of the plays attributed to him. There are still plenty of theories going around that Shakespeare was a woman, a collective of people, or who knows what else. I actually used to live in Stratford-on-Avon, his birthplace, and on a tour of what was reportedly William’s family home, they casually mentioned “he was a property mogul — he bought and sold properties. That’s where his money came from — he barely made a penny from his plays”.
So, you know, it’s not too hard to chill out and write a play while you’re stuck at home if you’re already rich.
Secondly, Isaac Newton was renowned for being an anti-social hermit — social distancing was his life, so keep in mind when you read things like this:
“At home, he built bookshelves and created a small office for himself, filling a blank notebook with his ideas and calculations. Absent the distractions of typical daily life, Newton’s creativity flourished. During this time away he discovered differential and integral calculus, formulated a theory of universal gravitation, and explored optics, experimenting with prisms and investigating light.” (Source: Foundation for Economic Education)…
that you balance it with information like this:
“Especially in the earlier part of his life, Newton was a deeply introverted character and fiercely protective of his privacy. Even in his maturity, having become rich, famous, laden with honours and internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s foremost thinkers, he remained deeply insecure, given to fits of depression and outbursts of violent temper, and implacable in pursuit of anyone by whom he felt threatened.” (Source: The Newton Project).
Social distancing, staying at home and working on your scientific calculations isn’t such a huge shift for somebody who was already doing that with most of their time.
I also did a quick search for “how did Newton support himself financially?” and found that he was a fellow of Trinity College, on top of being appointed the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics — basically, meaning that he had plenty of money to keep him sheltered and fed while he whiled away his hours on his maths and physics.
Plus, those guys didn’t have Facebook. Or children.
This isn’t even to mention the fact that we are living in a completely different world, a very different society, from what those guys were living in — and that shaming people for not maximising their time on ‘productivity’ is pretty arrogant.
Let’s take a realistic look at what we’re dealing with right now.
It seems to me that this quarantine lockdown has put people into one of a few categories.
1) People totally unaffected (so far) by the whole thing, because they already worked from home, isolated, had passive income etc, and so they are basically chilling out at home doing whatever they were doing before, waiting for things to ‘go back to normal’.
2) People whose lives are being completely destroyed by the virus or the economic fallout — either they are sick or dealing with the illness of a loved one, they have lost their jobs or homes, or they didn’t even really have jobs or homes to begin with, so this entire situation is catastrophic for them. Obviously, nobody has these people in mind when they post their “10 things to do in quarantine” memes.
3) Parents who are suddenly stuck at home with all of their children, being expected — perhaps — to continue to work their jobs from home while simultaneously managing the long list of tasks emailed over by their childrens’ teachers. The more kids you have, the more tasks you’re expected to manage — so you are now teacher, parent, work-from-home mother (or father), cleaner, cook, etc. You’ve probably seen a few memes by now suggesting fun crafts that you can do with your children, which were perhaps written by people who don’t actually have children.
4) People who used to commute to work every day and suddenly find themselves doing their jobs from home, wondering why they ever needed to attend all of those meetings in the first place.
5) Key workers who are still braving extreme proximity to people every day, such as healthcare workers. Several people who don’t want to go into work but feel forced due to economic pressures and shitty rights, who are not even given protective equipment.
6) Those who are ‘on furlough’, meaning you’re being paid to stay home and NOT do your normal job. I’ll maybe add in here people who are staying at home being funded by some other source of money (parents, a Newton-style fellowship, whatever) — this is similar to category 1, but your usual life has been affected by the sudden loss of routine.
I’m going to suggest that any “top things to do during quarantine” article should only be aimed at people in category 6 — if those people don’t have children or any other sudden responsibilities — and maybe those in category 1. If you’re aiming your well-meaning advice at anybody else right now, I suggest you take a look at what exactly your motivation is.
As with a lot of advice, urging others to use their new-found solitary confinement to brush up on their French, write that new novel, or get really in shape, comes from a place of privilege. It could be the privilege of not having to worry about money — after all, those on furlough might be getting paid to “do nothing” right now, but as more and more news stories unfold about the recession we’re heading into, it can be hard not to start panicking about what kind of financial situation we’ll be in two, three months from now.
There’s other types of privilege to consider, too — maybe you’re lucky enough to be quarantining with a loving partner, or a really good set of friends. We should not discount the motivating effects of being able to “top up” on social contact, touch and love every day. For those who are at home in an unhappy or abusive relationship, this time at home can be a living hell. Just look at the figures at how rates of domestic increase have dramatically increased during lockdown to see why being stuck in the house is not a safe or relaxing environment for many people.
For those who are isolating completely on their own, it can be pretty hard to motivate yourself to do anything — cooking seems a much greater chore when it’s just for yourself, so healthy, balanced meals might go out of the window. Community and social contact is one of the number one predictors for good physical AND mental wellbeing, and there’s only so much a Zoom conference call can do before a crushing sense of loneliness sets in.
We are also often talking from a place of mental health privilege when we suggest that others use their time at home productively. For those who were already struggling, or are facing a new encounter with, anxiety, depression, or any other mental health issue, it is already hard enough to try navigating the implications of a global pandemic and a recession coupled with the fallout of social isolation, without adding the pressure to ‘perform’ and ‘succeed’ on top of that.
I really enjoyed this article, in which the author shares his thoughts on getting through quarantine when you’re struggling with depression, for example.
People — we are going through an unprecedented, chaotic situation in which all the cracks in our global systems are beginning the show. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next. And even if we get through this… climate change is just around the corner.
It is totally OK that you have not done anything ‘productive’ with your quarantine.
I think this funny 5-minute video by Youtube comedian Julie Nolke — in which an anxious woman at home consults her (pretty drunk) Fairy Godmother for advice — actually puts it really well. As she puts it — why are you putting all this extra pressure on yourself to achieve right now? Your brain is trying to comprehend a global pandemic — why are you adding all of this extra stress onto yourself?
It’s my suspicion that this is a particularly challenging time for empathic perfectionists — the kind of people I seem to draw into my life the most — for a couple of reasons:
1) Our Inner Critic is leaping around as if on crack, screaming “YES! You can no longer use “lack of time” as an excuse not to become a super-achiever and win a Nobel Prize and save the world!”
2) As empaths (or highly sensitive people), we are deeply concerned for what is happening right now — for all the people suffering, for the planet. We feel the anxiety, the uncertainty, the loss of hope — which is why we have to take scrolling through social media in very small doses. So it’s very hard to focus on our own personal success and goals when we’re also trying to process the magnitude of what’s happening right now — is it really so easy to focus on learning a language and doing a kickboxing routine when there are millions of people suffering and dying?
(If this describes you, you may be interested in registering your interest for my upcoming online course, The Empaths’ Toolkit, which will help you set clear boundaries, deal with your inner perfectionism/critic, and stop yourself being totally overwhelmed by other people’s emotions — and also still be a nice person and make the world a better place).
Now, I’m not saying that other people are not worried about the greater state of the world. It’s just that — in my experience — the majority of people are able to push these questions out of their minds and just “get on with” things. But the sensitive people, those who really look at the big picture and lie awake at night worrying about global warming, can’t just pretend that everything is normal and keep ploughing ahead with “Business as Usual”.
I want to speak to a couple of things — firstly, on our obsession with achievement, and secondly, where that continued push to ‘keep going’ has gotten us.
If your inner critic is slamming you for not having written your bestselling novel just yet, please remember that while Shakespeare and Newton were doing their thing, the majority of people were at home, carrying on with their everyday lives.
We don’t all have to be extraordinary. In fact, we CAN’T all be extraordinary — that defeats the entire meaning of the word. And the world can’t run that way — can you imagine a world full of Newtons and Shakespeares? How would you get food from the shops, clean water from your tap, or be able to walk down a clean street? I doubt either of them would have been deemed ‘key workers’ right now.
I’m a big fan of the way Mark Manson puts it:
“We’re all, for the most part, pretty average people. It’s the extremes that get all of the publicity. We all kind of intuitively know this, but we rarely think and/or talk about it. The vast majority of us will never be truly exceptional at, well, anything. And that’s OK” (Source: In Defence of Being Average ).
We might find, in the middle of all this chaos, that what we want is not to ‘improve ourselves’, to boost our chances of future employability, or to learn a bunch of new skills just for the sake of it.
We might find that ploughing on with ‘Business as Usual” is NOT what we feel, deep down, is called for right now.
What if this exact drive to always be more, to achieve more, to be better, bigger, richer, sexier, is exactly what has been destroying our souls and our planet this entire time?
Just think about the fashion industry, as an example — one of the biggest contributors to environmental destruction, based on the idea of convincing people that they are not desirable/worthy of love/modern enough unless they continue to “update” their perfectly good clothes every season.
In a world where we all felt perfectly at peace with ourselves, secure, and full of self-love and acceptance, we would never stand for such ridiculous BS. We would demand clothes that last, perhaps make them ourselves, and at the same time we would be secure enough in our own skins not to judge others for what they chose to wear.
I want to share with you the metaphor my brilliant friend Phoebe Tickell offers: we have been on a train for many years now, a train that’s hurtling towards the edge of a cliff — but nobody really looked at where the train was going. The most important thing was to keep the train moving. Suddenly, a fire breaks out in one of the carriages — and the brakes, which nobody even knew existed, suddenly grind the train to a halt.
Everyone is too busy trying to put out the fire to notice that the unimaginable has happened — the train has stopped. While others were keen to get the train moving, others were able to look at some of the conditions on the train. To ask — why are we even on this train to begin with? Where is it heading? What happens next is up to us… read her whole story and introduction to the project Moral Imaginations here.
It’s as if we are standing outside that burning train, completely stunned and shocked at what has happened. We are assessing the damage, asking ourselves just what all of this means, and whether or not we want to get back on that train. And all the while, there are people running around saying “Wow! Let’s use this time to run around and pretend we’re still on the train, so that we can get straight back on it once it restarts!”
When you step back and look at this scene, it can really seem quite laughable.
Look at what the train has done. There’s a trail of destruction in its wake. The planet is on fire, and we didn’t even stop to pick up the pieces because all that seemed to matter was to keep that train going, because — because what? Because 1% of the people on board were benefitting from it and couldn’t bear to let it stop, and for the people to realise they didn’t actually have to be on that train in the first place?
Shouldn’t we just…. stop? To stop and assess, and reflect, and look back on everything that has brought us up to this point again?
Interestingly, it was around December 2019 when this little gem popped up in my newsfeed, and I shared it to great approval and cheer from several friends:
The text here is not my own, but from what the group Druid shared:
The winter solstice time is no longer celebrated as it once was, with the understanding that this is a period of descent and rest, of going within our homes, within ourselves and taking in all that we have been through, all that has passed in this full year which is coming to a close… like nature and the animal kingdom around us, this time of hibernation is so necessary for our tired limbs, our burdened minds.
Our modern culture teaches avoidance at a max at this time; alcohol, lights, shopping, overworking, over spending, comfort food and consumerism.
…and yet the natural tug to go inwards as nearly all creatures are doing is strong and the weather so bitter that people are left feeling that winter is hard, because for those of us without burning fires and big festive families, it can be lonely and isolating. Whereas in actual fact winter is kind, she points us in her quiet soft way towards our inner self, towards this annual time of peace and reflection, embracing the darkness and forgiving, accepting and loving embracing goodbye the past year.
“Winter takes away the distractions, the buzz, and presents us with the perfect time to rest and withdraw into a womb like love, bringing fire & light to our hearth”.
.. and then, just around the corner the new year will begin again, and like a seed planted deep in the earth, we will all rise with renewed energy once again to dance in the sunlight
A lot of people re-shared this, applauded it, thanked me for giving them permission to slow down, to step back, and to take stock.
And then, just a couple of months later, COVID-19 came along and forced many of into this position. For those of us privileged and lucky enough to be able to stop and take stock… why is it so hard to take advantage of this time?
I suspect there are several reasons. One is that the lack of control over the current situation, the uncertainty, is so overwhelming that we need to find something to control. Working on ourselves, setting projects and tasks and goals, can help us feel more in control of our lives.
And this is OK. Creating a routine, injecting meaning into our lives and have something to work towards, is good. But beating yourself up when you don’t manage to tick everything off your list? I feel that speaks to a deeper anxiety; a projection of our inability to control the wider situation. So instead of crying because we can’t stop what’s happening globally, we focus all that pain and rage on ourselves for not managing to finish all 10 tasks on the list.
You may also be dealing with ‘privilege guilt’ — seeing all those healthcare workers risking their lives on the frontlines, realising that your job is not ‘essential’, may be filling you with a kind of existential anxiety. Maybe you feel that it’s an insult to them that you are sitting at home doing nothing. Maybe you feel that you owe it to them to use your free time productively.
So let’s take a look at what exactly we mean by ‘productive’.
The idea of “improving ourselves” during quarantine often looks suspiciously like making ourselves more pleasing to a capitalist society. Brushing up language skills — to boost the CV? Getting in shape — to look more like the ‘ideal shape’? Starting a side-business — to make more money?
All of these things work on the assumption that this is all just a temporary pause, and that things will go back to exactly how they were before in a few weeks.
But what if the world has changed irreversibly? What if we’re not going back to the same place we left?
I’m going to make a bit of a wild guess that if you’ve been really struggling to motivate yourself to complete a certain task that there may be a deeper reason behind it. Perhaps your previous excuse for not doing it was a lack of time and now you find yourself procrastinating, avoiding it, and wondering whether this makes you a terrible, lazy person. But we usually procrastinate for a reason — which can be due to a number of physical and mental struggles, a fear of rejection and failure, or because — if we’re truly honest with ourselves — we just don’t want to do it.
Goals that come from an external source — the “should” goals — are very hard to achieve at the best of times. If you’re only going to the gym because you feel like you should, or writing a book because somebody has told you that it’s a good idea, or learning a language you don’t really like, then combine that with a sudden lack of social contact or routine, the stress of an uncertain global pandemic, uncertainty about your own future (financial, health-wise etc), worrying about your loved ones, AND guilt for “not doing enough”, and you can bet it’s going to be a challenge to get yourself going.
Add to that the fact that your goal might suddenly seem completely pointless, frivolous out-of-touch. Learn a new skill that may now become completely worthless if we’re heading into a recession? Learn a new language when I don’t even know if I’ll be able to pay the bills in a month? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a clue what sort of skills will be ‘profitable’ in a few months from now. What I do sense is that my ability to grow my own vegetables might be a lot more useful in the future than my ability to, say, teach English online.
If you truly stop and check in with yourself, do the goals you have set yourself really align with what your gut is telling you? Are they goals that YOU really want to achieve, or goals that you feel you ‘should’ be trying to achieve?
Psychology has shown time and time again that when we do things based on extrinsic motivation — e.g. to earn a reward, status, money, praise — we are far less likely to be committed to the goal, and far less likely to be happy, than when we do things based on intrinsic motivation, e.g. because we enjoy the activity itself or find the subject fascinating.
To summarise what I have said again:
We should be very careful about shaming people for not being productive enough during quarantine, when they have a number of other things on their minds — like dealing with the thought that society as we know it may be about to collapse. To understand why people become so anxious about not doing enough, we can look to a need for control over something, perhaps a general underlying perfectionism that comes out more strongly in times of stress, or a type of guilt when we compare ourselves to those who don’t have the option of staying at home.
To understand why we don’t keep up with our goals, we need to ask ourselves what the true reason behind wanting to achieve those goals is in the first place. We need to be really honest with ourselves — are these goals reflective of the kind of world we’ll be living in after all of this is “over”? Are they reflective of the kind of world I want to be living in?
And this drive to keep achieving, to keep the wheels turning, to keep being more — better — faster — stronger — is the same mentality that has driven forward the infinite growth model we see everywhere. Our economies rely on constant movement and growth in order to survive, while our planet has a limited amount of resources. It doesn’t take too much to realise that an exponentially growing population with increasingly high expectations for their lifestyles is not sustainable on a finite planet (or even 2–3 planets, if you’re pinning your hopes on Elon Musk taking us to Mars).
What I suspect is this: The train has been ploughing forward for years, hurtling faster and faster towards that cliff edge, and we are now left on the side of the tracks — stumbling around for balance. Just like the feeling of still swaying when you step off a boat — perhaps when we sit down, we still feel as if we’re hurtling forward.
Business as Usual, Infinite Growth, the Rat Race, whatever you want to call it — still lives inside our bodies. We’re so used to it that we don’t know how to stop. We’re addicted. The ‘programming’ of our industrial growth society is so deeply ingrained into us that the idea of stopping, staying still, of not constantly trying to be better, to achieve more, is deeply counter-intuitive for many of us.
I invite you, instead, to try and imagine a different type of world. A world where you are already good enough, just as you are. A world where, perhaps, you can still learn new languages and pursue hobbies, but because they are fun and interesting — not because you feel a deep, burning need to convince yourself that you are worthy of acceptance and love. Not because you feel that stepping off the treadmill means death.
For all of us privileged enough to be able to sit at home right now, not having to work or rush around or do anything much, I invite you to spend this time really reflecting on just what kind of life you really dream about. About the kind of world that we might be able to create where we don’t have to constantly fight our way up the ladder in order to gain a feeling of basic security or acceptance.
Maybe, just maybe, you throw away that to-do list and give yourself the gift of just existing. Yes, you might feel bored at first, but let the boredom come. Boredom often turns into energy to do and create, and you might just find that the things your soul is really calling you to do are completely different from the “self improvement” projects that you started off with.
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At the same time, maybe just sitting with the feelings is too much. I’ve been running a 30-day email course called Staying Grounded in Times of Crisis, which looks at how we can use mindfulness, emotional intelligence, psychology and a wealth of visualisation and writing exercises to connect to our deepest wisdom, strength and resilience. But then again, I’ve just spent this entire essay telling you not to take on new projects, so maybe don’t listen to me!
