I imagine there are plenty of people out there reading this, who can’t even remember this past New Year’s Eve. With how this year has gone, it feels like memories of “normal” life become more distant. While I have moments like that myself, I still remember New Year’s Eve 2019 like it was yesterday.

My girlfriend and I went out for dinner at Les Zygomates in Downtown Boston. Over drinks and dinner, we talked about how 2019 was a year of change for both of us. We’d seen each other go through our fair share of struggles and come out better, stronger than before. We saw growth in each other, and we were proud of our accomplishments. Ultimately, we were extremely optimistic about what 2020 would bring us. What more could we accomplish? What more could we discover about ourselves? We talked about traveling during the summer, finally giving ourselves a long-deserved break from our respective work obligations and a ton of built-up stress along the way. For me, I had goals related to my design studio, Santoro Design. I wanted to launch the new website early in the year, begin to get more of the projects I wanted, and eventually land an office space within a co-working space or other building.

Our hopes were up. 2020 was going to be ours. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. 

By early March, COVID-19 had hit my home of Boston, MA, and it was only the beginning. Around that time, I ended up moving in with my girlfriend down in Providence, RI; escaping the initial cases building up. We watched as businesses we loved began to shut down for the foreseeable future. Restaurants we enjoyed were struggling to keep up, some of them even closed for good. I had to give up the co-working space membership I’d just gotten back in Boston since it was clear I wouldn’t be using it. Our days turned into these amorphous stretches of time. Hours blended in together. Work during the day couldn’t have been more stressful. At that point, I had to not only worry about getting enough work to sustain me, but I also had to be concerned about how I was going to do it all and not lose my mind. I knew that given the state of everything, signing on for unemployment was not going to be an option. The beginning of quarantine was a total and complete nightmare.

Here we are, in the middle of August. As I write this, I acknowledge that I’ve been extremely lucky and privileged to have thrived during this catastrophe. Not only did work never slow down, but it was the best work I’ve done in my entire career; some projects are still on-going. To say that I’m thankful for every single client and connection of mine, who made this reality possible, would be an understatement. I’m also thankful for my girlfriend, my friends, and my family who have supported me during this time. I shudder to think about how I would have fared, or where I’d be right now if it weren’t for any of them. It’s safe to say that I’ve somewhat adapted more to the “new norm,” even though it’s still uncomfortable to wake up to. While I have nothing concrete to attribute to this adaptation, I will say that life in quarantine has been helpful in reinforcing certain lessons that have brought me to this point, and will carry me further.

Allow Space For Unproductive and Negative Emotions

There’s no getting around this: life and work during quarantine have been a fight with the darkest parts of myself: the parts that just wanted to lay in bed, numb and mentally exhausted; the parts that wanted to just procrastinate that task for a little longer; the parts that brought up thoughts of, “What’s the point of any of this?” For those of us able to work from home while constantly feeling the weight of every headline and statistic, it’s been crushing blow after crushing blow to our mental health and our productivity. Contrary to popular belief, no amount of goal-setting or productivity exercises can stifle the feelings of grief, depression, and even anger. There’s no amount of telling our minds to “stop it” or “shut up” when it comes to these feelings of what we’ve all been experiencing: crisis exhaustion. 

The only way we can push through is facing these feelings head-on. We need to give them space to exist and to speak. We need to give ourselves moments to not be okay or unproductive, even meditate on them. When we give them space, we process our feelings and make it easier for ourselves to push forward. In these desperate times, and other times after this, we need to prioritize well-being over productivity, because our well-being will ultimately determine how productive we can be.

Prioritize Yourself Via Your Schedule 

As a creative professional diagnosed with ADD, working from home has been a struggle. Essentially, I was continuously running on fumes. My work got done, my clients were happy, and my studio got paid, but my general well-being was burnt out in ways I’d never felt before. I put myself on the back burner, and I felt it every day.

Since then, I’ve tried to get back to some semblance of my working hours. I have a quiet start to my mornings, work from 9 AM to 5 PM with an hour-long lunch, work out, and then make dinner. I hardly ever take calls in the morning, and I try to keep late nights to a minimum. By doing this, I’ve made efforts to try and reclaim some normalcy. Being a designer requires me to be at my best, so I can make the clearest decisions for the projects I work on, and my clients’ best interests. I know that being self-employed gives me this inherent advantage, but I also believe that these are uncertain times that require us to prioritize ourselves in whichever way possible. At the very least, we should try and reserve one hour of our day to go outside for a walk. Especially for careers in design and tech, there’s nothing more beneficial than separating from our screens and taking a break.

Limit the News Intake

2020 has had no shortage of terrible news. Since the beginning of this year, it feels like the bad news hasn’t stopped once. Especially with our phones, we’ve become a society held hostage to every notification bump, alert, and alarming tweet. This has not only contributed to my own sense of crisis exhaustion but also many of my colleagues and other people. It’s even more difficult to completely disconnect from the news as well because everything that’s been going on has been extremely important; from COVID-19 to racial justice, and our political unrest.

Whether people decide to stop or not stop news intake is up to preference. Personally, I feel like 2020 couldn’t be a more pivotal year for our country, so to stop watching or reading the news is not possible for me. However, I have been making efforts to limit the amount of news I take in during the day. I usually leave it for later in the evening or during the morning before working hours. I’ll get notifications during the day, but unless it’s extremely important I won’t click on them. If I find myself going down a rabbit hole of news overload, I try to snap myself out of it and get back to the task at hand.

We’ve Got a Long Way To Go…

The cold, hard truth is that until we get a vaccine, COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, we can at least still try and retain some balance and normalcy to our lives by prioritizing our self-care. At this point, we can’t afford to be anything but realistic about our limitations, our health, and our well-being. As long as we take care of ourselves, we’ll continue to be in better shape to stay productive. The most important thing I’ve tried to remember is that we are all learning and working through this experience together. We can only continue to be patient and caring towards ourselves, and each other.

If you enjoyed this piece, please follow Chris Santoro on Twitter @santorodesign1.