We know each of you has had to make significant changes during these extraordinary times, both in your teaching and at home. On another post, we’ve compiled a list of resources available to both you and your students, but here we wanted to highlight some of our favorite self-care suggestions. As educators, we know you have spent countless hours over the past months taking care of your students. We hope this post inspires you to take some time to take care of yourself!

Academic Self-Care Principles

Ada Palmer’s “Healthy Academic Work Habits” acknowledges some of the stressors unique to academics during these exceptional times. She provides advice for areas such as time management, finding cues that help you engage with your work, and getting plenty of sleep, exercise, and food. All of her ideas are excellent, but we’re highlighting some of our favorites here:

• No one is helped by you sinking: as you prioritize your work and well-being, you’ll actually be in a better position to provide support and feedback to family, students, and colleagues.
• Not all hours are equal: identify those times of day when you’re most effective, and dedicate them to your own work and research. You may find that your brain is most alert first thing in the morning, in the evening once the stress of the day is over, or right after you exercise. You might experiment with these different times to see which ones work best for you. An hour of work when you’re most attentive can be just as or even more effective than two hours at a less ideal time.
• Watch for the short-term task trap: tasks that are pressing, such as responding to an email or finishing something due this week, are easy to prioritize at the expense of longer-term tasks and self-care. However, these long-term tasks and self-care are often our most important work. Writing a dissertation or finishing a book chapter and taking care of your mental well-being may not seem as pressing, but their will be more severe consequences down the line if you don’t prioritize these. In order to prevent short-term tasks from taking over your life, Palmer suggests creating accountability deadlines for long-term tasks and setting aside certain hours for these and self-care. It can help to have an accountability buddy that you check in with periodically!
• Make a workspace that works for you: while where we work may be limited right now, there are things you can do to personalize your space in helpful ways. Consider wearing something that helps you feel productive: for some, it’s a blazer, for others, a comfortable sweater–find what works for you; do something to mark the time and space as “work,” such as changing the lighting, taking a shower beforehand, or having a cup of tea; determine whether you like to have all of your books around you or if you like to work in a tidier area; and find a comfortable way to work, such as using an external monitor, a standing desk, or position your screen up higher so you’re not hunched over your laptop; and consider working with a friend, either in person or over the phone/video chat.
• Choose leisure activities wisely: when you take a break from your work, consider those leisure activities that help rejuvenate you. Some activities may be fun, such as watching TV or playing video games for hours, but they’re not rejuvenating. Palmer is quick to point out this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do these kinds of activities–just make sure you’re including other activities that help give you energy and make you feel better. She suggests talking with a friend, cooking, pleasure reading, taking a bath, playing with a pet, journaling, exercising, or consuming screen media in shorter segments with a friend.

General Self-Care Principles

In their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (2019), Drs. Amelia and Emily Nagoski identify stress as an emotional cycle with a beginning, middle, and end. Reducing stress, they argue, is less about eliminating the stressors and more about moving through the stress cycle and getting to the end. They suggest seven ways to move through stress and arrive at relief:

• Move: whether it’s going for a bike ride, dancing in your living room, or doing some gentle stretches next to your desk, physical movement helps release the stress you’re holding in your body and allows you to relax.
• Breathe: deep, slow breaths in followed by even deeper, slower breaths out are one of the quickest ways to alleviate stress and anxiety, and you don’t even have to leave your desk.
• Connect: positive social interaction indicates to your body and mind that you are safe, which allows you to release the stress of the day. So call a friend, go on a socially distanced walk, or try making dinner together over Zoom.
• Laugh: it may seem obvious, but laughter really does help regulate your emotions, which helps you move through stress to relief. So listen to your favorite stand-up comedian, watch that cat video on YouTube, or reminisce with a friend about a time that made you laugh!
• Show Affection: this can be a bit tricky during a global pandemic, but finding moments for safe physical touch will increase oxytocin, which can improve your mood, change your hormones, and even lower your blood pressure. If you can safely do this, great! And if not, feel free to try one of the other many ways listed here to relieve stress.
• Cry: crying won’t eliminate your stressor, but when you allow yourself to cry for a few minutes, your body goes through the stress cycle and you come out the other side with relief. So watch that Greek tragedy and let the catharsis do its work.
• Create: the Nagoskis say the act of creation is “tak[ing] something difficult and put[ting] it outside of yourself.” So whether it’s making face masks, painting, writing, baking, or candle making (a new favorite pastime of one of our own OPAs), finding moments to create will help relieve the stress you’re experiencing.

Engaging in self-care is not a panacea for our current situation, but we hope that in trying out one or two of these suggestions, you’ll find greater relief, which will allow you to respond to yourself and your sphere of influence with kindness and compassion.

What do you do to support yourselves during these challenging times? Let us know in the comments below!