My long covid year – it really isn’t about productivity!

Hello everyone! If you are still following, you would have noticed I’ve managed a measly 3 posts this year. I have a lot of half written drafts for you as part of a series on “It’s not about productivity” that I began in February but never completed. One reason for this is that soon after I wrote that post, my son brought home covid and I spent a week working from home at his side before getting it myself, along with my youngest. It was our first time getting covid.

The son who brought it home managed to recover very quickly — learned to crochet and began making quite advanced plushy toys with all his extra energy before returning to school. Myself and my youngest son struggled a lot more. While covid itself was not too bad — it felt like less than the flu but more than a cold — once I returned to work after the requisite five days of isolation, I found myself crashing at 2pm with massive headaches. Every day. My six year old had a range of neurological and gut problems alongside fatigue and headaches. Both of us needed to rest a lot more, but both of struggled with resting with very active brains and bodies accustomed to high energy days.

The other difficult part was just not knowing if it would get any better. Was this the new normal? Or was this just part of ongoing recovery? In the end, for both of us, it was the latter. We both took around three months to recover about 80% of our energy levels.

Productivity hacks for covid recovery

Once I realised I couldn’t work fulltime, I reviewed my commitments and sought some advice from a trusted colleague who has also experienced two bouts of long covid. She referred me to ‘spoon theory’, used by people with chronic illness and/or disability to think about and communicate their energy levels. The idea is that you have a certain number of ‘spoonfuls’ of energy each day, and these levels can change day to day, week to week, or month to month. Some things use more or less spoons of energy, and while there are some common things, it can also be quite personal. I spent a few weeks paying attention to a) what drained my energy quickly and b) what gave me energy.

Limit things that drain energy

For myself, making decisions drained my energy extremely quickly. Days when I had to make a lot of decisions brought on headaches much earlier than days where I could follow a routine, focus on one task, or avoid leadership decision-making. Obviously, this needed to be communicated to people around me, and I need to make some space to make decisions, but also create lots of space and time where I did not have to make decisions. I used many of the principles I have written about before, such as:

• holding on to routines, meal planning, and screentime,
• keeping up family rituals including days off,
• prioritising focus hours to do one task at a time and
• making sure that focus time was not interrupted too much and was backed up by recovery time.

One of the most draining decision-making tasks in academic life is emails. Emails come in at all times of day and night, and each one requires you to make a decision, even if the decision is to ignore or delete it. To cope with this, I set up an auto-reply that let people know I was working reduced hours and that I was unlikely to get back to them unless my input was necessary. It referred people to colleagues for different projects, and it spelled out what I would be doing (prioritising my teaching and students for that semester) and would not be doing (taking on PhD examinations or students, reviewing articles). What I like about this strategy is that I don’t have to decide whether to tell people or say yes or no to a request. People can see I’m not going to do the thing they want, and move on to the next person on their list, without me having to feel bad about it!

Make time for things that give energy

Unsurprisingly, this was rest! For me, it was particularly about resting the eyes. Our eyes feel rested when they are closed, but also the lightly attentive wandering gaze of being in natural environments gives rest and restores energy too. Although in some ways I was fatigued by physical activity, I actually spent more time going for light walks down the river walkway about 1km from place. A 5km slow round trip rested my eyes from screens or other reading, and gave my brain recovery time. But I did need to balance this light physical activity with lie-flat rest with closed eyes.

Lying flat, closed-eye rest was supported by a yoga eye pillow infused with chamomile and lavender. The lavender cleared the nose and the weight of the eye pillow helped me keep my eyes closed even though I was not sleeping. I used my insight timer app with my phone set on ‘do not disturb’. The insight timer app can play a range of soundscapes and you can set up preset bells. I used the bells in 5 minute intervals (for shorter rests) to keep track of how long I was lying there so I did not need to open my eyes to check the time. I sometimes used the time to meditate, other times just let my mind wander, and I often dozed off.

I also kept my bed mainly for rest. It’s tempting when you are not well to work from your bed, and I do certainly do that on occasions when I have something contagious. But by going into work in the mornings and coming home to rest, I was able to give my body the right signals to set up good rest.

Ongoing lessons on focus, rest and recovery

When I was unwell, I recalled a lot of things I’d learnt about energy from two years of glandular fever and chronic fatigue syndrome when I was a teen. It’s good to know that those skills are ones I’ve retained!

I’m mostly recovered now and have a busy schedule of research meetings, travel, supervision, writing and organising. But I’ve carried over some key things for the second half of the year.

• Keeping a daily ‘brain rest’ time. Usually this involves 20 minutes of movement-meditation in the morning, followed by some eye-wandering, coffee-drinking time gazing at my garden from my yoga mat. Regular brain breaks during the day, where these usually involve connecting with a natural environment in some way.
• Going home earlier. I have worked 9-5 daily since moving to Palmerston North three years ago, but this year I’ve started leaving earlier if I can managed it — say 4pm. This gives me some time to connect with the kids before dinner and have a lie down if I need it.
• One day a week from home. This isn’t that relaxing as I have to do kid stuff and I have a lot of interruption from family members working from or returning home. I also tend to do housework which isn’t relaxing. But it does mean the weekend is more relaxing as I’ve done some of the laundry, and my plants don’t die as I’ve watered them midweek! I also try to keep this day meeting free, and nap!

When travelling, I am:

• Doing cognitively demanding tasks in the morning, and less cognitively demanding tasks in the afternoon. Sometimes this isn’t possible but cognitively demanding tasks include giving talks or keynotes, conducting research interviews or workshops, and preparing materials for these things. Non-cognitively demanding tasks include catching up with people, or attending events organised by others.
• Thinking carefully about where I stay — prioritising places where I can have some downtime and a good sleep. I am fortunate that I have research funding to pay for most of my trips and it is budgeted in. I enjoy staying with others, but making sure I have some space to be alone for a few hours every day is important for me.
• Balancing early morning starts with early check-ins and naps! When travelling, I often have to get early morning flights or trains. If I have had to get up before 5am, I try and ask for an early check in (around 1pm) wherever I am staying and have a nap or a lie down before any afternoon meetings or dinners.
• Early nights, limiting alcohol. Although I love a nice wine, I try to avoid this while travelling as it reduces sleep quality.
• Morning yoga routine. If I’m travelling for longer than a few days, I pack my travel yoga mat and try to keep that up.
• Planning meetings with downtime between. My old self would squeeze in as much as possible on a trip to make it ‘worth it’. Now I’m telling myself that a quality piece of work or interaction is more likely if I give myself recovery time. I also prepare better for meetings or fieldwork when I have more time.

Well — that’s it for now. For reference this post took me ten days to write and edit — a task I usually would have done in one sitting. I would say I am operating at about 90% these days but do need a bit more rest than I used to. How does this compare to your experiences of covid or long illnesses?