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How to Feel Productive in Quarantine as an Unemployed Millennial

Useful Human Tips

By Mlana LorePublished 4 years ago 6 min read
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How to Feel Productive in Quarantine as an Unemployed Millennial
Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

1. Start Investing Your Money

I had never bothered to spend much brain power considering what my money was doing before quarantine. I always had a job, spent some money, and saved a modest amount, but that was about the extent of my financial literacy. Now, unemployed and anxious about my future financial stability amid this pandemic, I decided to finally invest (pun intended) some of my time in understanding my money. Through just a few hours of diligent googling, youtube video watching, blog reading, and more googling, I was able to gain enough of an understanding of basic investments and savings strategies that I felt confident dipping my toe into the financial planning world. I first moved a portion of my savings into a high interest savings account, which increases the annual interest (compounded monthly) that your savings are making. If my money is going to sit in a savings account, it might as well be making me more money sitting there, even if it is only a few dollars difference. I also invested a chunk of my savings into a diversified long term investment portfolio, after discovering robo-investing. This tool allows for hands-off investment with little to no management fees. While this may not be the best option for financially savvy people, it works well for financially challenged students like myself, who are not out here managing millions of dollars. I have also been using the app Wealthfront in order to track my savings, spending habits, and investments in order to hold myself accountable (Wealthfront app: https://www.wealthfront.com/c/affiliates/invited/AFFB-EFAQ-ZXX8-H92Z)

2. Make a Recipe Book

I’m sure most of us students miss homemade cooking when we are away at college, and each summer spent living on my own prior to COVID-19 made me realize how hard it is to think of recipe ideas when cooking three meals a day for yourself. Therefore, I am trying to capitalize on the unexpected time quarantined with my family to pick their brains and books for the best, easiest, and cheapest meal ideas for when I am back out on my own. Taking the time to compile recipes may seem unnecessary in the age of the internet, but I find that I turn to tried and true family recipes more often than I search the internet for a new dish. This also gives you a great excuse to use up more quarantine time to try out recipes for taste testing. Personally, I love handwriting and decorating journals, so I am making a bullet journal style cookbook with all of my favorite family recipes to set me up for culinary success once I move back out into the real, virus infected world.

3. Find Some Side Hustles

This one is a difficult one. There are infinite blogs out there advertising get rich quick schemes through playing solitaire or selling pH balanced water, but many of these fail to pan out as viable sources of income. However, there are some side hustles that can help bring in some cash when our jobs and internships have been canceled. As a broke student stuck in my childhood bedroom, I have taken one for the team and sorted through a variety of these opportunities to find which ones might actually work. If you love teaching others, there are a variety of online tutoring platforms you can sign up for (like Varsity Tutors), as well as just advertising your services online or in your neighborhood. This strategy goes for good old fashioned babysitting, pet sitting, and house sitting as well. While it may feel like you’ve regressed to middle or high school, these jobs can still pay good tax free money. Also, if you are an individual with ovaries, you can make good money donating your eggs (if you are over 21 and in good health). Obviously this is a very personal decision, but if well researched can be done very safely at major fertility clinics while also helping a family hoping to conceive.

4. Make Hella To Do Lists

Does anything feel as rewarding as crossing something off of a to do list? Sometimes I write something on my list after I’ve already done it just to cross it off…While it can feel pointless to keep up with to do lists in the timeless void that is quarantine, it can be a great motivator to keep the little daily accomplishments on track. I’ve recently started writing mini, daily bullet journals that track my exercise, water intake, meals, schedule, and tasks for each day. Writing out the next day every night helps to ground me in my goals and maintain some semblance of normalcy in my weeks. Compared to my hectic schedule as a working student in college, crossing off “make a smoothie for breakfast” seems rather trivial, but at this point it’s where we’re at. With nothing else to really hold me accountable for what I do with my time, at least my lists can serve as motivation to get sh*t done.

5. Appreciate the Heck out of Mother Nature

The older I get, the less time I seem to spend outside; no purpose or goal, just outside enjoying the natural world. When you feel like your head is about to explode from wandering the same house, consider taking a solo trip out into whatever wilderness is around you. Hiking through the woods, sunbathing in a field, or befriending woodland creatures are all great activities to do while maintaining social distance from other humans. I’ve really struck up a friendship with a lizard (his name is Clancy) who sunbathes on the concrete steps in my yard. In lieu of actual human contact, hugging your favorite dog, tree, cat, horse, lizard, or frog can give you some of the oxytocin, with none of the COVID-19.

6. Contemplate the Frailty of Capitalism

When all else fails, why not spend your time staring at the ceiling and realizing that we gotta eat the rich. This pandemic is exposing the fragile nature of the consumerist economy, wherein people abstaining from pedicures and cocktail hour for a month topples the stock market and ruins lives. The global, collective trauma that we are all experience to varying degrees, largely based on socio-economic status, can feel overwhelming, especially in a culture that equates the value of the stock market with the value of human lives. Do what you can to help yourself and others amid this pandemic, whether that is donating to a food bank, taking time to meditate and center yourself, or fighting the prison industrial complex while bringing down Jeff Bezos. I find a healthy dose of personal growth and organization and also lobbying against the exploitation of the working class really helps fill my days inside these four walls.

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