Creative ways to maintain & improve your social wellbeing when working from home
Updated: Apr 21, 2020
By Brenda Hobin
Last blog we spoke of managing a remote team, this week we look at our social well-being and our relationships with others.
If love socialising, social distancing can be disconcerting. It can result in loneliness and depression in the long run if left unchecked. Humans are used to have some form of control over their lives and losing total control as a result of not being able to see how the game unfolds can cause further anxiety. When you read the news or turn on the live news wire, all you hear is COVID-19, information and mis-information can cause further confusion.
To ensure your social wellbeing are in a healthy state, do the following:
Invent new ways to interact and connect with others. You are most probably familiar with chatting applications such as Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Line, Viber, and the list goes on. Be creative, connect with others through team activities or challenges.
#StayAtHome Zumba Challenge by Jackie. Jackie recommended challenges to try, challenges for the family that involves hand washing movements, challenges from the 80s.
Pun Hlaing Exercise channel with May. May offers tutorials twice weekly that you can do at home with everyday items. The movements are simple and allow you to stay in shape during the working from home period.
Virtual theatre fest. Call your friends and arrange a time to watch the plays together. Share what thoughts about the acting skills, the storyline after watching the play. Pun Hlaing Estate has put up a 7 day virtual festival featuring Shakespearean, family friendly, critically acclaimed and non-English language plays.
Cooking classes. This is a great opportunity for you to improve on your international cooking skills. You can coordinate with friends to learn how to cook a recipe together. There are many tutorials out there, from Chinese Masterchef John Zhang's fried milk to Gordon Ramsey's slow roasted pork belly.
Virtual dinner dates. Schedule a time to meet others, could be a group of people or simply one-to-one and have dinner together over video chat platforms. During dinner, share your recipe with the others or simple chat about anything, just like you would normally do when dining out.
Virtual dance parties. There is no reason to not dress up and meet others virtually for a boogie night out. Schedule a time, create a shared playlist or someone in the group is appointed as DJ to put on a list of dance music you can boogie to at home.
Karaoke mash-up. Get a group of friends and each sing the same song. Someone in the team will edit and mash up the video together. Lots of easy to use software in iOS or Android. Share the video and even post it on your social media feeds for a great laugh.
With so many activities online, you can get overdosed on social media. And it is perfectly fine to take a break if being online becomes overwhelming. Just stay out of the online world, spend time with yourself to re-charge. You can read a book or simply listen to the tunes recommended by Yoma Land music channel by Dora Myszko.