As an Online Pedagogy Assistant, I spend a lot of time brainstorming with instructors about how they can best support their students during remote learning. But very rarely do instructors mention how they are taking care of themselves.

There are resources available that focus on productive structuring and stress-relief during this time. Consider Ada Palmer’s Healthy Academic Work Habits, or our recent article on academic (and general) self-care principles.

In the spirit of considering instructor mental health during the coldest and cloudiest of quarters, we invite you to this week-long instructor self-care challenge! It starts Sunday – any Sunday. Or you can pick and choose which days’ suggestions sound interesting and try them on your own time. But if you, like me, would like to make a fun game of doing the hard but necessary work of examining how we spend our time and look after ourselves, here is your challenge:

Sunday: Clean up, reorganize, and/or decorate your workspace.

• This will help you prepare for the week. We spend so much time at our desks now – or our kitchen counters, or home offices, or dining tables. Take stock of your space where you get work done, wherever it is. What will make it nicer to be in? What will help you release stress and focus?

Monday: Track your time.

• Take notes today – where does the time go? Include short tasks as well as long ones. What sorts of things tend to interrupt your work hours, or prevent you from going to sleep on time? Take five minutes at the end of the day to reflect on this.

Tuesday: Set aside one hour to work on a long-term project.

• I don’t know about you, but I spend so much time trying to catch up on daily tasks and things that are due this week, that I forget I have a much bigger project due a few weeks or months down the line. Spend some time today making progress on something you haven’t touched in a while, but that you know you need to make time for.

Wednesday: Socialize.

• Hang out with someone in person, if possible. Consider who is in your quarantine pod – family, roommates? Can you have a game night?
• If not, can you meet someone for a short socially distanced walk? Can you play with a pet for a while? Is there someone you would like to FaceTime with?
• If not, what activity can you do by yourself that you will find rejuvenating? Take yourself on a date.

Thursday: Consider your sleep and exercise habits.

• Do you wake up at the same time every day? Do you schedule time into your week to exercise? Take ten minutes to write this down, and another five to set some goals for next week. These goals can be simple, small changes. For example, “I want to exercise once more a week than I usually do” or “I want to try a new kind of exercise” or “I want to get eight hours of sleep once or twice more than usual.”

Friday: Reflect on the week.

• No need to write this down! Think about what you learned about your workspace preferences, or your time usage, or your feeling of productivity after working on a long-term project. What little things made you feel better this week? How can you use that knowledge going forward?

Saturday: Don’t check your email until the afternoon. Make yourself a nice breakfast and have a productive (or relaxing!) morning to yourself.