Coping During the Coronavirus- Strategy #22

Create Buffers 

It’s hard to imagine that several weeks into quarantine, one of the things I miss is my commute to work. It’s not that I miss the rush of making it to the office on time or the experience of navigating a crowded subway. Rather, I miss the opportunity to reset before shifting between the various roles in my life. My commute to work provided time and space to shift into my professional self, and my commute home gave me some time to decompress before jumping into caretaking and household responsibilities. My “commute” is now a rushed and very abrupt transition from seeing patients, to helping my children complete schoolwork to cooking and cleaning, to seeing patients, and back again.

What I’ve learned over the past five weeks is that if I don’t create that buffer, no one is going to do it for me. For me, it looks like taking 10 deep breaths and stretching before I shift from one role to the next. On the rare occasion where I have more time, it looks like reading for 10 minutes or listening to music. How might you create some buffers in your day?