Space patrol
If you’re literally boxed in, with few options for outdoor pursuits beyond the supermarket, it might be useful to seek guidance from someone with experience being confined in tight spaces.
Astronaut Anne McClain, who was a flight engineer on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019, recently shared some of tips with her 125 million Twitter followers.
Most are surprisingly applicable to those of us here on earth and focus on basics like self-care, including “hygiene, managing time and personal stuff, getting sleep, and maintaining mood”.
And because she had to share the ISS, there was advice on team care and group living, from respecting roles and responsibilities to being accountable, giving praise freely and keeping calm in conflict.
Another tip from astronauts: keep busy. They don’t have a lot of time to sit around and stare into space. Okay, they do a bit of that. But like grandma used to say: an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. In other words, engaging in physical and mental activities is a great way to stop your mind wandering into worst-case scenarios or terminal boredom.
Setting tasks and sticking to them not only provides structure to your day, completion brings the satisfaction of seeing a job well done, no matter how mundane. Your challenge, is to recognise when you’re slipping into an apathetic state (every now and then is fine) and refocus on a worthwhile pursuit.