I'm Extremely Done With All The Pressure To Hustle / Upskill During Lockdown

With this in mind, iso period has given rise to a whole stack of people on Instagram posting about their seemingly-perfect lockdown routines. “I get up at 6.30 to have a matcha latte, practice yoga, write a thesis on Shakespeare and have time to read the dictionary. In fact, these productive iso posts do nothing but make us, the viewer, feel guilty that we aren’t doing the same. Similarly, when scrolling through our feeds nowadays, there’s a whole heap of content dedicated to upskilling while in lockdown. Find that new hobby , they tell us, learn how to garden , write for half an hour a day, use this time to think . Now, I’m not saying that this stuff is bad – we should absolutely be trying our best to keep ourselves busy and get those endorphins flowing – but all of this content pertaining to motivation and productivity does place a certain amount of pressure on everyone to do iso ‘correctly’. It goes without saying, but we are in the middle of a worldwide fucking pandemic, and these are truly unprecedented times, so, first and foremost, we need to be kind on ourselves. There’s no rule book for this – we all have our own way of coping – so cut yourself some slack if you’re looking around at everyone’s ‘iso inspo’ posts and feeling guilty for not being as productive as they seem to be. Yes, it’s important to stay motivated and to stick to some sort of routine but, above all else, the real aim is to leave this lockdown period with your mental health intact. Easier said than done, I know, but if there was ever a time to treat yourself, turn the phone off and do absolutely fuck all, it’s now.