All at home: how a family can survive in self-isolation

First of all, let us state a simple truth, formulated by Kozma Prutkov: "You cannot embrace the immense." In a home confinement, you cannot simultaneously be a super professional home teacher, work full-time in the extreme conditions of the economic crisis, and at the same time maintain ideal relationships in the family, combining this mix with serene self-development, mindfulness practices and an ideal lifestyle. God forbid to have time for at least something.

From the point of view of time management, you always need to MAKE THE MAJOR.

Determine: what is most important to you? What should be done right now and first of all?

Of course, take care of the health and safety of your family. This means that it is necessary to organize the observance of all the necessary precautions: hygienic, social, organizational.

Check that older relatives have a stock of food and regular delivery of everything they need.

Train yourself and all family members to wash their hands before and after any external action - from touching the buttons in the elevator to leaving the house to the pharmacy.

By default, wear a mask and gloves when leaving the house.

This is your first line of defense.

However, all these measures will be useless if another security system is not implemented - the economic one. The problem with our mentality is that it is very difficult for us - especially for those whose childhood and youth fell on the era of socialist education - to accept the priority of money over other life values. Dealing with the material well-being and financial security of the family is boring, unpleasant and uninteresting for most of us. However, there was an emergency, one for all, and the basic rule of financial protection - to have a "safety cushion" and a reserve of funds for 3-6 months - sounded acute for everyone who lived from paycheck to paycheck and spent more than earned.

What to do now?

The same thing that all experienced and efficient businessmen do during the period of economic trials.

Remove unnecessary expenses as quickly as possible, just cut them to zero.
Provide the most favorable treatment for those departments and employees who bring money.
All the capricious, dissatisfied, rocking the boat - to the exit.
Everyone who is able to mobilize as much as possible, quickly and without long explanations to understand the tasks at the moment - to leave.

When fires are blazing around, this is not the time to babysit those who are not aware of the danger of the situation.

The same principle can be applied to the family. There are two functions in priority:

Making money.
Maintaining a family structure - one that does not interfere with making money.

For a while, you will have to postpone the need for self-realization and satisfaction of the "wants" of those family members who do not bring income. Housewives with highly artistic, unpaid hobbies, no matter how promising they may seem to you. Schoolchildren and students with the most important studies in the world, except for those cases when they will receive a solid cash grant or a full-scale scholarship right next day. Good-natured grandmothers, whose "incoming" help with household chores is worse than a nuclear war in terms of its consequences. The interests of these close people should temporarily recede into the background. And the first one is the one who brings more than other money or, which is especially important, can bring at least some money in the short term.

“Money is here and now” is the main criterion of the present moment.

This prioritization can be completely out of the ordinary. For example, if in your family the main source of income is the pension of older relatives, start blowing away dust particles from them and provide them with the most comfortable mode of existence.

If the only one who can work now and bring home some money is a student son who got a job delivering Yandex. Food, let the whole family help him.

If your dad, who earns a lot, is forced to work in an unusual and unsuitable home environment for him, do everything so that he does not feel any inconvenience.

There is only one rule: the more money a person brings to the family, the more convenient his place should be for work, the more polite and attentive other relatives should treat him, the quieter children and pets walk around him.

It is similar to the laws of wartime, but this is the only way you can survive in extreme conditions, when everyone is at home, everything is remote, and money is earning more and more difficult every day. When the period of abundance comes again, perhaps you will take care of expanding your home, creative self-realization and updating the technical base: laptops, smartphones. But now you cannot afford that.

What to do with children?

Relax. The urgent transition to distance learning for unprepared schools and schoolchildren does not imply that parents should completely replace the entire education system.

All you can do now is to comfortably "overexpose" children in inappropriate conditions. If your children at this time read books, watch lessons online, chat with their favorite teacher on Skype, communicate with classmates on social networks, breathe fresh air on the balcony or learn to put away their toys - you can already consider yourself superparents.

If, for some reason, you have adopted a mild sleep and rest schedule for children at home, it's time to fix it.

The exact time of getting up and going to bed, strict observance of the regime moments - nutrition, hygiene procedures, calm and "violent" games "on schedule" - are useful not only for children, but also greatly facilitate the life of adults. And adults have to solve a lot of difficult problems: how to find a new job, where to get new sources of income, how to keep their family ship afloat. If your kids have a rigid and understandable routine, you will know how to arrange your day around these immutable rituals. They sent the children to bed at 10:00 pm - and you have a couple of hours to rest and catch your breath, for example.

If you are alone with your children, but at the same time have to work remotely, if no one can occupy your children during your work, you must win those few hours for yourself at any cost. You shouldn't even think that you can work and entertain children at the same time. If mom or dad is working, children should not make loud noises and pound on the door of the room where their parents are locked with a laptop or are talking on the phone.

Of course, a rare child can quietly self-isolate in the children's room for 6-8 hours in a row, which are needed for the full-fledged work of adult family members.

Remote work now is not relaxation, but the highest requirements for prompt response, high-quality results of each action and difficult connections with other members of the distributed team.

Of course, you will worry about what happens to your children behind the wall. Try to act strictly on the clock. 45 minutes of concentrated work, then 15 minutes to visit the children and have a cup of tea, relax, switch from work to home. With such rhythmic touches, children will be calm, because their parents are not neglected, and you will be able to maintain an optimal mode of concentration and relaxation.

If there are older children among your children, feel free to appoint them as “managers of the children's team”. At all times, the older children followed the younger ones and quite successfully. It is only recently that we began to believe that children need to be relieved of such responsibilities within the family.

As a rule, children respond very well to rules that are precisely formulated and supported by all family members. If you've made an agreement and require a perfectly made bed right after waking up, doing your homework right after lunch, and neatly assembled toys 15 minutes before bedtime, rest assured that all of this has to be done. Your children will have no problem implementing such a program. On the contrary, it will be much easier for them than in a situation of “free choice”.

Technical and organizational infrastructure

Of course, it's easy to give advice on organizing a home office when you have a private home or apartment that's so spacious that there are more rooms than family members. But for our country, this is a rather rare situation. More often than not, there are fewer rooms than people and are not designed to work efficiently. We do not live like Professor Preobrazhensky from Mikhail Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog", but exactly the opposite: we both "operate" and have dinner in the same room. We sleep next to the writing table, or even do not have it at all.

But tightness is not the worst thing. Not always every family member is provided with the equipment necessary for remote work. Much more often, one "means of production" - and in conditions of a distance it is, first of all, a working laptop - there are one and a half to two people.

What to do in such a situation?

If there is even the slightest opportunity, you still need to buy the necessary gadgets. You can buy used equipment cheaply in several ways: buy it on Avito.ru or Youla.ru, get an old office computer from someone you know to write off, take out a loan and buy some simple laptop model, sufficient for simple work.

In any case, the dominant principle of the distribution of premises and equipment in the family should be based on economic feasibility.

Whoever can make the most money gets the best laptop.

Accordingly, if mom needs a laptop for work, and children - for study, mom works on a laptop, and children use smartphones or iPads available to them.

If your kitchen or bedroom used to be the most sacred place in your home, not to mention a living room with a TV, it's time to convert your home space into "office corners", and these workplaces should become absolutely inviolable.

You may have to work in shifts, distributing work sessions in time between family members. You may feel the need to create the ideal working environment for one person, and the rest of the transition to his service - bring food, clean the room, blow off dust particles.

The organization of family relationships is an individual matter. The main thing is that you understand that all this is temporary.

If you can hold out in such extreme "work overcrowding" during self-isolation, your efficiency in hybrid mode of operation, which does not involve total retirement, will increase by an order of magnitude after the crisis. You can masterfully combine work from a cafe, car, plane or coworking space with classic work in a traditional office.

Change of context in a confined space

It is difficult to find such a convinced couch potato, introvert and social phobe who would feel good without the possibility of leaving the apartment. The most difficult thing in such a limitation is the absence of a change of context: scenery, circumstances, setting.

A change in activities, a change in the environment, a change in work and rest regimes is a resource in itself.

How can we carry out a change of context if we are strictly limited in movement around the city and even in our neighborhood? There are several ways to overcome this threshold.

First, it is necessary to strictly distinguish between online and offline existence. In an ordinary pre-quarantine life without restrictions, we got along with our smartphones, we do not fall asleep and do not wake up without them. It's not so scary as long as it happens in the dynamics of a modern metropolis. I ran to the metro, got into a comfortable seat in the carriage, looked at my mail or read an e-book, dashed through the streets, uttered audio messages for friends and colleagues, called the children, checked what they were doing there, and came to the office. Everything is in motion, the world around us is constantly changing. But when you are tied to the same place for many days in a row, you will imperceptibly begin to overextend yourself, and your psyche may not stand it. The total online total distance must be compensated for with a carefully sustained offline mode of life.

Whereas previously one “Internet Shabbat” once a week was enough, now it is necessary to arrange breaks of an hour or more without any telephone or Internet connection at all.

Of course, not in those moments when you promised your colleagues and partners to be in an active working state. But, first, make it a rule to turn off your smartphone when you sit down to dinner or do gymnastics. Stand "gadget quarantine" one hour before bedtime. Do not look at the screen immediately after waking up. Small “no-gadget” buffer zones will give you the ability to balance your mental state.

Second, try zoning your home space. Divide your home into an adult and a child, or, alternatively, a male and a female. To the zone of "perfect order" and general chaos. Think about it and determine where in the apartment you feel relaxed and where you feel collected. The main principle is the contrast of states so that you can truly switch when entering a particular room.

Perhaps the moment has finally come when it is necessary to clear the balcony of trash and use it either for work or for good rest. Perhaps the problem will be solved by a minimal, but carefully tailored furniture rearrangement to your needs.

Experiment and be attentive to your real needs. Look for signals, "anchors" that in everyday life switched you from work to rest and vice versa.

Thirdly, alternate intellectual and sedentary work with accessible physical activity, be it simple gymnastics with light dumbbells or violent games with children on the floor. If you've been sitting at a laptop or documents for a couple of hours, warm up in any kind of homework. Nail the shelves, wash the dishes, tidy up the pantry. This should be done not "according to needs", but strictly by the hour. Remember that your body is not designed to signal you how to compensate for your natural walk down the street with household chores. Just set a timer, 15 minutes of vigorous "physical education" - and you can get back to business.

Timing as a way to reduce anxiety

In the current extreme situation, when “everyone is at home and everyone needs to work,” it is very easy to start making claims both to each other and to yourself. In your ordinary pre-crisis life, you knew when to be happy with yourself and your results. They could feel how good and correct your actions were, according to the usual signs: a feeling of fatigue at the end of the day, the reaction of colleagues, the joy of relatives. During a crisis, all the usual coordinate systems are knocked down, you live and work in uncomfortable conditions, an ideal storm is raging around your self-isolated world: in the economy, in public life, in healthcare. No one knows in which direction events will turn, no one knows how everything will turn out further, whether everything will return to its normal state and to which circles it will return.

It's hard not to worry, but you can't be nervous all the time. There is a very simple, albeit time-consuming, way to "ground" your psychological state and control what is happening to you in reality. Whether you are working hard or thrashing around, doing whatever you can to support yourself and your family, or being numb, spending enough time with children, or criminally neglecting them.

Timing is a classic basic time management technique, which is a total recording, full accounting of your time during the day. In the "here and now" mode, you write down everything you do in a simple table like this:

Time	How many?	What did you do
Until 7:00	6 o'clock	Dream
Until 7:30	30 minutes	Lying in bed
Until 7:45 am	15 minutes	Cooked breakfast
Until 8:15 am	30 minutes	I read the news about the new quarantine restrictions, had breakfast
Until 8:55	40 minutes	Children woke up, washed, dressed
Until 9:05 am	10 minutes	Call from work, got a scolding from the boss

This is by no means a plan or a daily routine. This is exactly the fixation of what is happening to you, what you are actually doing at one time or another.

With the help of timing, you can really estimate how much time you need for a particular action, how much time you actually spend on a particular job.

The most important thing is not to do timing and analysis on days. First, write everything down and analyze it only after a couple of days.

The optimal timing is 2-3 weeks, but for the first results there will be enough data for a few days.

Teach your children to keep timing, for them it can be a fun educational game.

Do not impose on adult family members the time management practices that you have mastered. You can just tell them about the results.

The temptation to organize your neighbor, not yourself, is very great, but it also invariably spoils the relationship.

Time management experts Gleb Arkhangelsky and Olga Strelkova compiled a practical guide for those who were forced to switch to telecommuting. You will learn what can help you stay productive outside the office, how to effectively use online tools and keep in touch with colleagues, manage a remote team and organize a family routine when everyone is at home.