How to stop quarantine from ruining your life

When self-isolation first started, I was like, "You know what? This is gonna be a piece of cake! I work from home, I'm at home all the time, this should be a cakewalk." [Applause] [Music] It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, especially at the beginning. My sleep schedule went to crap. I stopped showering right when I got up because I didn't really have anywhere to be. I also started playing a lot more video games looking for movement. Dude, my favorite thing in this game is running people over with my car; that's my favorite thing in general.

So I think part of the reason why this quarantine was so challenging was because I think there's a huge difference between spending time at home and not being able to leave home. For instance, with my own work habits, yeah, I work from home, but I also have this habit of leaving the house whenever I'm starting to reach a wall in right productivity, or when I'm kind of goofing off a little bit. I'll say, "You know what? I should hit a coffee shop and start writing," but I don't have that option anymore.

I also usually like hitting the gym, getting the blood pumping so that you can take your mind off things, re-energizing you for the day, but there's no gym anymore; they're all closed. Another huge barrier that I've been encountering is that I share this house with three other guys who I'm quarantined with. So since they're not going to university or work anymore, they're just here all day long, and we're all really good friends so we distract each other along.

"Joe, he's filming."

"Johnny, pace."

"Yeah, I'm filming you guys!"

"Can play FX, I can't play bikes right now."

Thankfully, though, over the past week in a bit, I've really started to ramp up the productivity. I'm starting to feel more optimistic, like myself again. I'm kind of getting used to this whole quarantine thing. So I wanted to share with you guys some of the things that have really helped me climb out of this kind of quarantine-induced chaotic… what am I even saying? I got out of a rut basically.

Okay, so the first thing I want to touch on is that you need to be aware of the yo-yo effect. So let me know if you've ever been in this situation: you're in a little bit of a rut, you're playing more video games, you're not really taking care of yourself, you're just generally kind of slothful. You've lost your motivation to be productive, and you kind of divulged into this self-destruction and pleasure-seeking mindset for a long enough period of time until you reach a breaking point where you're like, "Wow! I really feel like a piece of crap. I'm gonna make massive change! I'm gonna take massive action!"

So you quickly do a little 3-6-9… 360. Because if you did a 360, you'd go in the same way, but you do a 180 and you start going the other direction. You start being super productive—almost unnaturally productive. You're starting to hit the gym, you're moisturizing your face even though you never did that before, you're clipping your nails.

"Shou, why is everything I talk about to do with grooming?"

You're getting your work done on time; you're just insanely productive, and you're starting to feel really good. But you have a feeling in the back of your mind that it's unsustainable, and you eventually push yourself so hard you get burnt out. You lose all of your energy, so you yo-yo back in the other direction, and the cycle repeats itself. So if you've ever succumbed to the yo-yo effect, I'd imagine if you're a human being, you have at some point in your life.

There are a couple of reasons why this happens. First of all, you didn't do the productive things long enough for them to be locked in as a habit; and the word "habits" kind of lost its meaning. But I mean something that is easier to do than it is not to do. Once something is a habit, you don't really have to worry about yo-yoing back as much because it's kind of locked in psychologically.

The second reason why we yo-yo is because the habits that we try to adopt into our new lifestyle are so extreme. We bite off more than we can chew, basically. So it's really important to pick one or two easy things that are simple to do that you can actually count on yourself to achieve daily. Lock these things in as simple daily habits until they're easier to do than not to do. That way, you won't get burnt out by doing them.

Okay, so what does this have to do with the quarantine? Well, that's my next point: the morning is the key. One thing I've noticed, especially during this quarantine, is that your morning shapes the entire rest of your day. In a pre-pandemic society, people usually wake up, they shower, they get dressed, pop something in their mouth, maybe grab a coffee because they have somewhere to be; they get out the door to go to work or school, and that's the reason for kind of taking their morning seriously or going into battle mode.

But during the quarantine, it's sort of hard to flip that switch into battle mode because you're kind of just staying at home. And even if you are working from home, most people don't see the necessity to treat working from home the same as they would leaving to go to work. But it is extremely important to do so. Whenever you shower and get dressed, you kind of flip a switch in your brain that says, "I'm in work mode now," or "school mode now," or "at least I'm ready to start the day."

If you wait to shower, and you wait till later in the day to get dressed, or you never get dressed, you're either postponing flipping the switch or not flipping the switch in general. For me, flipping the switch comes down to a very simple decision that I have to make when I first wake up. I can either choose the door on the left, which leads to outside my room, and going through that door always leads to me going down the stairs, making coffee, and browsing memes for half an hour or the first hour of the day checking social media, etc.

Or I can choose the second door, which is the door on my right, which leads into my bathroom, which always leads to me taking a shower, putting clothes on, and then walking downstairs. It's a very simple decision, but mentally, I'm like two completely different people when I shower versus when I don't shower—when I'm in sweatpants versus when I actually got ready for the day. Sweatpants me likes to browse memes and check social media, and “Benji, you too showered” me likes to light a candle and write some content for YouTube.

So find out what your little decision is that you have to make every single morning, and flip that switch as early as possible. The third point I want to make is to leverage boredom. So the quarantine is really boring. Spending all day every single day inside is kind of a bummer; you start to run out of stuff to do pretty quickly. But something I never talked about with you guys on this channel is that this channel only exists because of boredom.

I only continued to make videos early on, especially when I wasn't getting any views, because of boredom. Ask my mom! Like, "Hey, can I invite my friends over?" And once we played Halo co-op on legendary too much, we got bored of that. We went and made a movie. I don't think I'd be making videos today if I wasn't bored back then with my friends.

I was still in university, and between classes and studying, I didn't have an Xbox or a PC capable of running very many games. In fact, I used a Chromebook for the majority of my university career, and I was itching to find something to do with my time, something to work on or work towards, and that's why I started this channel. When we fill every single parcel of time with something to do, with a screen to look at or a show to watch, we almost lose touch with ourselves.

But this aloneness, or this boredom, is extremely important because it helps you uncover things that you need to address. It can either lead you to think about and accept something traumatizing that happened to you in the past, or sometimes it's not that scary, and you just have this underlying anxiety because you haven't paid your taxes yet. All these emails and letters are starting to pile up, and this anxiety is the catalyst for taking action on those things.

But if you keep distracting yourself, you're never gonna have that; you're never going to be scared into taking action. You know, that boredom created sort of like this itch to, you know, go do something, to fill time instead of just like having your time filled for you via social media. So you're gonna have a lot of time during this quarantine to sit alone with your thoughts and try to figure out what the most important thing in your life is. Don't distract yourself from this feeling.

So the last point I want to talk about is probably the most important, and that's this idea of using the quarantine to your advantage. It's very easy to take on a victim role; in fact, it makes a lot of sense. There's a compelling reason to play the victim during a pandemic because you can't really do anything about it. It feels out of your control; it's scary, it's uncharted territory. There are tons of reasons why you can fall into feeling helpless or confused or lose your way in some form or another.

It's a lot harder, but probably a lot more advantageous, to view it as an opportunity. Because the nature of being on house arrest for 24/7 actually has a huge advantage, and that's because you have a tremendous amount of predictability with what your day looks like, and that is the breeding ground for developing healthy habits. If every day feels like Groundhog Day, then that's the perfect opportunity—this is fertile soil for developing habits.

A lot of people can't start healthy habits during their regular life because, you know, things pop up. Maybe you have to go away for work, little Johnny has a baseball game you have to go watch, so you have to skip the gym; there are all these little things that regular life throws at you. Quarantine life is a lot more boring, a lot more monotonous, but a lot more predictable.

So this is probably the best opportunity of your life to lock in habits that you can then take into your normal life once this whole thing blows over. If you're someone who has generally struggled to implement good habits, if you're somebody who's tried to meditate for a day or two or three and then it kind of falls off, or you try to develop a habit of reading and then that kind of falls off, then I'm actually going to recommend a book that I've recommended on this channel, but I think it's the most important book you can read at a time like this, and that is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.

I'm rereading it myself, and I'm uncovering so many things that I somehow missed before, and it's making me realize it's one of those books that you should read several times. I highly recommend checking out the audiobook version, specifically using today's video sponsor, Audible. And that is because it's actually narrated by the author himself, so his personal anecdotes that he wrote about in the book really hit home and feel more personal.

Not only does Audible have the largest selection of audiobooks on the entire internet, but every single month they send you one credit which you can spend on any audiobook in their entire library. They also send you two Audible Originals. And one of the best things about Audible is that if you decide to cancel your subscription at any point, you still keep your entire library of books, including the books that you got for free using their credit system. So it's kind of a no-brainer, especially at a time like this when you have the opportunity to develop a reading habit.

So to sign up for your free 30-day trial and listen to James Clear's “Atomic Habits,” click the link in the description below or text "better ideas" to 500-500. Once again, to sign up for your free 30-day trial, click the link in the description or text "better ideas" to 500-500.

So, I was editing this video, and I figured that I would take this opportunity to tell you about Mormonism now. So we're almost at 10,000 followers on Instagram. The other day you guys helped me cook dinner over a livestream, and that was kind of hilarious, and it turned out pretty well, actually. And also, the minute that we hit 10,000 followers, I'm gonna be giving away a bunch of Kindles. So the way you enter that is just by following me on Instagram.

So make sure to click the link in the description below, give it a follow, and it'll be a fun time. If you like this video, make sure to hit like because when you hit like, the algorithm does fancy things, and my face ends up on people's homepages. Maybe during the quarantine this video can help people get their act together, so it's kind of a win-win for everybody.

If you're lurking here, consider subscribing and hitting the bell icon so that you don't miss future videos. A lot of people are asking about the "inaction is the slow death" merch and where they can get it. I think the Teespring shelf still shows up on mobile, but in any case, we're redesigning the shirts, we're making some sweatshirts and all that kind of stuff. I need to wait for it to come in the mail so I can take some product shots, etc., etc.

But yeah, they look awesome! But other than that, thanks a lot for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video. Stay safe out there, wash your hands! I think everyone's saying that. I'm not special.