the social distancing activity playbook: a practical guide to surviving pandemic boredom 😷🏠

Updated February 7th, 2024

As we enter another week of social isolation in the U.S. necessitated by COVID-19, many of us have realized that this could be our permanent situation for quite a while. More than ever, we are understanding the urgency of taking drastic action toward flattening the curve, because while our own safety may not be at risk, the lives of the elderly, immunocompromised, and service workers are. The most important thing you can do is to stay home if you can; it is the simplest and most tangible way to effectively help other people is to prevent the spread of the virus. Isolation is annoying and boring but it is temporary—death is not.

Social distancing is a strange thing, because we are free to move about the world but the edges of our worlds are limited; it feels a bit like living in a fishbowl. I’ve been taking nightly walks down to the waterfront two blocks away from my apartment, just to get some fresh air and to admire the Manhattan skyline. But there’s something very lonely about seeing the city shining right across the water—the cars ambling down the FDR, the lights winking from apartment windows, the colorful clusters of buildings glittering through the clouds—and feeling so far away, knowing that everyone else is in their own world too.

I thought I’d create a library of fun and creative (and mostly free!) resources and activities for the upcoming weeks (or months). This is not advice on developing a side hustle, WFH productivity tips, health and safety warnings, or a substitute for civic responsibility.

I want to be really clear that of course there are more important things going on right now, and staying entertained may be low on your list of priorities. But especially right now, misinformation is everywhere. I’m not going to assume the role of a healthcare professional or immunologist, and I suggest that you be very critical about the information you consume—digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield’s SIFT method is a good start. Don’t immediately trust what your friends repost on Instagram; make sure you are verifying information for yourself at the source or listening to people that are actually qualified to dispense advice. Follow the WHO for updates on the virus itself, Our World in Data for real-time updates on coronavirus deaths (here is why you should pay attention to that vs. the number of cases), the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for projections, and your governor for state mandates.

If you are lucky enough to be able to stay home, finding whatever small bits of joy or forms of entertainment you can in this time will be crucial, especially if this goes on for months. The boredom will be the hardest part. I’ve read a lot of “Things to Do in Quarantine” articles, but couldn’t find any that were really comprehensive or well-organized. I wanted to make something that you could actually reference again and again, so use it, bookmark it, and share it!

I’ll be updating this library as long as the quarantine continues, so if you’ve got creative activity ideas, category suggestions, or just want to say hi, drop a note in the comments or reach out via email or DM. I hope everyone is safe and healthy; we could all use a little more connection right now.

New Yorkers: If you are in need of emotional support, you can call the COVID-19 hotline for a free consultation and referral to a provider: (844) 863-9314

Support your local businesses if you can afford to, or volunteer:

• A list of restaurants open for delivery and takeout in Manhattan Chinatown

• Donate to undocumented restaurant workers

• Donate meals for seniors in Manhattan Chinatown

• Buy fresh bulk produce and other specialty foods directly from Asian supermarkets in Manhattan Chinatown

• Buy specialty foods from independent grocers like Chelsea Market

• Get food from Chinatown and Koreatown restaurants delivered

• Purchase other Asian snacks and groceries to be delivered directly to you from Asian Mart (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Konveny (Japanese), Maan Naa (Korean), and H Mart (Korean)

• Support NYC small businesses near you

• Join a mutual aid network to help other New Yorkers

---

quick links

learn • explore • create • practice • socialize • play • relax

---

learn

1. take an online class

• MIT offers their entire course catalogue online for free and in four languages—English, Korean, Chinese, and Turkish

• Enroll in a Khan Academy course or check out freeCodeCamp, a library of Ivy League courses, for a subject you’re interested in

• Coursera also offers some great certification programs and classes, including Yale’s popular “The Science of Well-Being”

• YouTube Learning offers libraries of resources for kids in different age groups: 13+ years old, kids ages 5-12, and preschoolers

• Scholastic created its Scholastic Learn At Home program, a free digital learning hub to “support virtual learning plans,” including English language arts, STEM, social studies and social-emotional learning

2. pick up a new skill

• Give in to the Duolingo owl and learn a new language for free (or for more immersive learning, download the Language Learning with Netflix Chrome extension and learn while you stream!)

• Learn a programming language on Codecademy or explore this collection of resources on Github

• Learn how to code with fun games like CSS Diner, CodinGame, LightBot, CodeMonkey (for kids!), or Ruby Warrior

• Join Skillshare to pick a skill to learn at your own pace (the first two months are free) or MasterClass for classes taught by professionals like Gordon Ramsey, Hans Zimmer, Natalie Portman, Bob Woodward, and Misty Copeland (unlimited classes for $15/month or you can access a bunch of them in WikiHow form)

• Brit + Co has an amazing assortment of creative classes, from cake decorating to wedding photography, now free with the code “SELFCARE”

• Join Canva’s Design School course for basic graphic design lessons

• The Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center has free concerts, lectures, and master classes on its website

• Airbnb is now offering Online Experiences led by hosts around the world, from magic lessons and makeup tutorials to family cooking classes and virtual bike tours

• Take a Today at Apple (At Home) class online to learn skills like drawing and portrait photography, from Apple employees

• Relax with GrowNYC’s daily Beginner Gardener Intensive

• Explore Brooklyn Brainery’s catalogue of affordable online courses like Mastering Matzah Pizza, Paint & Sip Sunset, Intro to Fermentation: Fruit Scrap Vinegar, Project Management 101, and Make Your Own at Home: Pasta (small entry fee for some of these)

• Work on your photography skills with free classes from Nikon, Fujifilm, Adobe Photoshop, and the Professional Photographers of America

• Try a virtual wine tasting with Passalacqua Winery in California—for $30, they’ll ship you three 2-oz mini bottles of wine and set up an appointment to guide you through the tasting process

3. deep-dive into an interesting topic

• Spend some time educating yourself on ways to support the black community and the #BlackLivesMatter movement

• There are so many great educational YouTube channels that cover everything from miscellaneous topics (TED, The Infographics Show) to pop culture analysis (The Take, Now You See It, Pop Culture Detective) to practical philosophy (Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, Wireless Philosophy)

• Explore The Pudding’s many visual essays, from The Emotional GIF Range of Celebs to Rappers, Sorted by the Size of their Vocabulary

• Poke around the weird and wonderful archive of wikiHow or Wikipedia articles—Wikipedia has a whole metaguide on “unusual articles,” or try these 10 Outrageous Wikipedia Articles That Will Send You Down a Rabbit Hole

• Go down an /r/AskReddit rabbit hole (other great subreddits you could spend hours on: /r/EarthPorn, /r/oddlysatisfying, /r/likeus, /r/MovieDetails, /r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG, /r/woahdude)

• Atlas Obscura’s Wonder From Home series explores everything from “citizen science projects you can do from your window, to animal encounters by livestream, to amazing skills you can learn at home”

• Some rabbit holes to fall into from Girls’ Night In

4. find your new favorite newsletter—here are some of mine

• Girls’ Night In: Self-care tips, reading recommendations, and curated products for the introverted soul (they also put together a virtual “care package” for social isolation called Stay Home Take Care with activities and resources to stay home, take care of others, uplift communities, and stay connected to loved ones)

• Quartz Obsession: A daily deep dive into one facet of the global economy (past topics include french fries, K-pop, logo bashing, ice cream trucks, boba, and The Bachelor)

• The Goods by Vox: A dispatch on the consumer economy—what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters—written with Vox’s trademark consumer-friendly language and pop culture savvy with some really excellent investigative journalism

• Just Good Shit: A newsletter full of recommendations and tiny but very useful life tips from lifestyle writer Rachel Miller

• Maybe Baby: A newsletter by writer Haley Nahman about “hard-to-describe feelings,” examining uniquely human idiosyncrasies and emotions—her newsletters feel like a scatterplot of unrelated observations until she ties them all together in a neat little bow at the end; it’s absolutely genius

• Griefbacon: No longer active, but the archive is really extraordinary; Helena Fitzgerald writes beautifully the wonderful strangeness of everyday life

• Big Spaceship’s Internet Brunch: Pop culture trends, GIFs, and other internet things

• The New York Times’ The Interpreter: An analysis of current events in a macro landscape; super helpful if you’re always wondering about the bigger picture in today’s lightning-fast news cycle.

• Why is this interesting?: Daily musings on (and surprisingly impressive analysis of) random interesting things and the ways in which they reveal something about human nature

• Scrap Facts: Quartz writer Katherine Ellen Foley shares the interesting little tidbits she finds while reporting on health and science that don’t make it into her stories

• Salmon Theory: Strategy through a philosophical lens

• Apartment Therapy: Home deco inspiration and quick homemaking tips

• The Informant: Original reporting and intelligence on hate and extremism in America today

• The Markup: Meaningful data-centered journalism about technology and its influence in society

• the skint: A list of free and cheap things to do in New York City; they’ve paused their programming and are offering a list of live streams and virtual events that you can join

explore

5. take a virtual field trip

• So many museums offer virtual tours like the Guggenheim in New York, the British Museum in London, Museé d’Orsay and The Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea, Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago the de Young museum in San Francisco, or the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles

• Visit a national park with Google Arts & Culture, or tour one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites with Google Earth

• Enjoy a meditative stroll through the Japanese Garden in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden or the flowers at the New York Botanical Garden, full screen and with the sound up and headphones on

• Watch a live presentation at the New England Aquarium

• Tour some of the world’s most beautiful libraries

• If you’ve got an Oculus headset or a Google Cardboard (you can even make a DIY version), check out Google Earth’s VR library (or tour the International Space Station!)

• Things to do with kids (Audible has all of their children’s audiobooks for free while schools are closed)

• Humans of New York shares some beautiful portraits and stories of New Yorkers, even from quarantine, like a virtual walk through the city

• Explore the actual surface of Mars through the Curiosity Rover’s eyes with Google

• Go geocaching—it’s like an open-source scavenger hunt!

• Or if you’re willing to get a little spooky, try Randonautica (full explainers here and here)

• The Empire State Building has a full audio tour in nine languages with corresponding visuals

• Take a trip to virtual Disney World or Coney Island with these 360° videos

• Tour another city’s natural wonders with National Geographic’s 360° YouTube videos: Indonesia’s coral reefs, sloths in Costa Rica, penguins in South Africa, glaciers in Iceland, and tiger sharks in the Bahamas

• Explore some of the world’s most beautiful and historic destinations like Japan (a virtual self-guided tour and a 360° VR tour), Switzerland, Chile, the Maldives, Jerusalem, and South Africa

• Join the NASA team by helping classify coral reefs with NASA NeMO-Net—the classifications you create go directly to NASA and help protect the oceans!

• Try stargazing with the NASA app

• Travel to the land down under with with Tourism Australia’s Live From AUS series, morning-to-night virtual programming from sunrise yoga and koala sanctuary visits to pub trivia and light shows

• If you live in Austin, New York, San Francisco, or Seattle, sign up for The Nudge, a weekly text-based activity planner

• Try a virtual road trip from home (thanks Ben and Luke!)

• Explore some landmarks in your city—or other cities—like Ain Dubai, the world’s tallest Ferris Wheel (thanks Amelia!)

• Aquire some environmental education (thanks Brendan!)

6. Attend virtual events

• Tune into live streamed concerts and festivals like SiriusXM’s Ultra Music Festival stream; check out Billboard’s full list for updates and links or follow @coronavirusconcerts for a daily lineup in their Instagram stories

• Enjoy the vibrant New Orleans music scene with live concerts streamed every day

• Artists like Sofi Tukker (1 pm EST), Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie (7 pm EST), and D-Nice (8 pm EST) are all playing live jam sessions every day

• Diplo created Mad Decent Live, a daily series of mini music festivals featuring him and his artist friends on Twitch

• The MusiCares Uncancelled Music Festival is a live streamed daily music festival where you can attend shows of artists that can no longer tour and support them in real-time

• The Social Distancing Festival is a crowdsourced artist showcase hub, created in light of COVID-19—everyone is encouraged to submit content!

• Nowadays, a dance club in Brooklyn, is live streaming from 8 pm to midnight every night, seven nights a week

• Get moving and energized with weekly dance parties from The Get Down (night) and Daybreaker (morning)

• For classical music, you can catch the Seattle Symphony broadcast performances, access Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall, or watch archived performances from NY Phil Plays On for free

• Spend a night at the opera with The Metropolitan Opera’s nightly opera streams or watch on-demand on OperaVision

• Shop directly from artists online at LA Art Book Fair 2020

• Tune into NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts

• The Stay At Home Festival, an arts festival of podcasts, comedy nights, and panels streamed daily

• Watch comedy sets from The Magnet Theater, Stand Up NY, and Caveat

• BroadwayWorld is hosting daily live streamed Living Room Concerts from its performers

• Andrew Lloyd Webber is streaming all of his musicals for free, one per week on YouTube (on Fridays at 2 pm EST, available for 48 hours)

• Watch The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues on Instagram—a mini series of shows that are written, cast, directed and performed by the NYC theater community in one day

• Follow The Show Must Go Online series on YouTube, live streamed readings of Shakespeare plays by excellent actors

• SXSW is streaming its SXSW 2020 Film Festival on Amazon Prime for free in a 10-day digital festival

• Miley Cyrus has started the Bright Minded: Live with Miley series, live on Instagram every day Monday to Friday at 2:30 pm EST about how to stay positive during quarantine, featuring special guests like Demi Lovato, Hailey Bieber, Dua Lipa

• Attend Meatpacking District digital events—everything from yoga to baking to flower pressing to drag queen story hour

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering its collection of live events and programs online, from gallery tours and lectures to jazz performances and studio workshops

• Join in for Caveat’s live streamed shows on YouTube, every Monday to Friday at 7 pm EST, covering smart and weird and entertaining topics like Drug Test: My Favorite Drugs to Do at Home, Kaytlin Bailey Presents U.S. History from a Whore's Eye View, Masters of Social Gastronomy: Bourbon Battles!, Ask a Political Scientist, and America’s Next Top Cult

7. go outside (just maintain six feet of distance from other people)

• Walk around your neighborhood—you can play I Spy with rainbows if you’re in Brooklyn!

• Take a bike ride; if you’re in New York you can easily rent Citi Bikes for a quick half-hour ride and explore the gorgeous bike paths in Central Park or Prospect Park, and if you’re in another big city you can rent electric scooters (Bird, Lime) or even mopeds

• Pick up roller skating

• Go outside and have a socially-distanced (or even virtual!) picnic; get fancy with a bottle of wine (or a refreshing non-alcoholic drink like limonana), a cute blanket, and a gorgeous charcuterie (or dessert) or fruit arrangement

• Repurpose your backyard—go “camping” in your backyard, or set up an outdoor movie theater with a projector and a bedsheet

• Create your own scavenger hunt or start a nature collection—look for plants, trees, and animals and collect rocks, acorns, leaves, or pinecones

• Explore a local state park or lake—outdoor activities like fishing, hiking, bird-watching, and kayaking are all great social distancing activities

8. take action to help your community

• Get tested for COVID-19—a lot of states like California and New York have free testing, but if you can’t access it or you don’t have insurance, get a free self-administered COVID-19 test in the mail and check the results online (I got one administered by a doctor in New York, and he described the feeling as “hot sauce in your nose” and it was weirdly accurate...if you’re doing the nasal swab yourself, just know that you will have have to push much further than you are comfortable with)

• Raise awareness of COVID-19 prevention and call on your government officials using Global Citizen’s tweet templates

• Buy from Merch Aid, which donates 100% of its profits to the businesses and features local artists

• Contact your governor with one click and tell them we want to #keepourdistance

• If you have the resources, consider fostering or adopting a pet—overcrowded shelters in New York City, Phoenix, St. Louis, Memphis, and Austin have all put out pleas for more people to adopt in the midst of canceled adoption events and understaffing

• Donate to Direct Relief, an organization providing protective masks, exam gloves, and isolation gloves to nonprofits public health institutions in affected areas

• Donate to Give Directly, an organization that gives cash to individuals in need in the most affected U.S. zip codes

• Donate to your local food bank or Meals on Wheels

• If you are healthy, donate blood or volunteer to help deliver supplies to your neighbors that can’t be outside

• Use Charity Watch to donate to communities and organizations in need

• Volunteer at a local telephone reassurance program to check in on seniors and other people who may need help

• Call your local officials and demand emergency health measures/sick days, shutdown of non-essential businesses, suspension of evictions and rent payments, and the resignation of Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler for insider trading

• Nominate local businesses or volunteer your services for collaborations through Dept. of Awesum, a “deliberate act of kindness” created for COVID-19

• A good list of mutual aid networks by city!

• Help edit the transcripts for the New York Public Library’s Community Oral History Project

• Volunteer to be a Crisis Counselor for the Crisis Text Line to help people in need through empathetic listening and collaborative problem-solving—you receive free 30-hour training that you can do from your couch, using just your phone

• Buy restaurant gift cards; they’re a great way to support the restaurants you love now, and guarantee some food for you later!

• If you’re a creative (art director, graphic designer, copywriter, illustrator, UI/UX designer, developer, photographer), offer your skills to restaurants in need with Creatives for Kitchens

• Help register people to vote! (Don’t forget to register yourself)

• Volunteer to be a poll worker on Election Day

Friendly reminder

create

9. try a new recipe

• Go to FoodPornDaily for inspiration + recipes or MyFridgeFood for recipes made from ingredients you already have (or check out How Sweet Eats’ “pantry recipes”)—you can use the Out of Milk app to keep track of what you need and what you buy, so there’s less waste

• Some good tips on minimal baking and recipe substitutions and a useful ingredient adjuster for easy recipe scaling

• Generate your perfect cookie with The Cookie Website

• Try that recipe you’ve had bookmarked forever (I baked my first loaf of French bread the other day, and I cannot recommend it enough)

• Challenge yourself—make a dish from one of your favorite movies à la Binging with Babish (he also has a great secondary channel called Basics with Babish), a gourmet version of your favorite snack food à la Bon Appétit’s Claire Saffitz, or host a Chopped or Iron Chef tournament with your roommates

• Make use of your pantry staples à la Food Network’s Alton Brown

• Try Bon Appétit’s The Basically Guide to Better Baking for recipes of varying difficulties to improve your technique

• Take an online cooking class with chef Massimo Bottura’s #kitchenquarantine series, join Christina Tosi’s #bakingclub on Instagram Live, or attend some Eater events

• Get answers to all of your culinary questions with Text-A-Chef from Equal Parts—everything from cooking help to inspiration on demand, or if you just need to know what to do with all the food in your fridge, just text your ingredients to Cook Magic and it’ll send you back a recipe

• Antoni Porowski of Queer Eye hosts Quar Eye on IGTV, in which he teaches you how to make elevated basics

• Have a themed dinner with your family or roommates

• Work on your mixology skills in an Instagram Live cocktail-making class with bartender Aaron Moses Robin

• Make your favorite Starbucks drinks at home

• Recreate iconic restaurant recipes like Disney’s Dole Whip, Mickey beignets, and churro bites; IKEA’s Swedish meatballs; McDonalds’ Sausage Egg McMuffin and hashbrowns; Wagamama’s katsu curry; Pret A Manger’s dark chocolate chunk cookies; DoubleTree’s Signature Cookie; Shakey’s Mojo Potatoes; and The Cheesecake Factory’s cinnamon roll pancakes

• Or, enter the ingredients you have in your house into Old Fashioned (for classic cocktails) or Cocktail Builder (for more creative ones) to see what you can make

• Actually try one of those Tasty videos (the more ridiculous the better)

• Whip up some of your favorite restaurant dishes with Family Meal, a website that offers beautifully-illustrated recipes from NYC restaurants that have closed in exchange for donations to the staff of those restaurants

• Also a good opportunity to meal prep or portion out ingredients for easy use later

10. have a creative photoshoot

• Play around with portraiture—a milk bath, double exposure, or use creative props

• Do a photoshoot with your pets or with random household objects

• Dress up and take some beautiful photographs using your neighborhood or your apartment as a backdrop, à la Krystal Bick of This Time Tomorrow

• Experiment with food styling of the food you cook/bake

• Recreate your favorite piece of artwork with items from around your house and share with The Getty Museum

• Try the ugly location photoshoot challenge around your neighborhood (just don’t touch anything!)

• Explore the EyeEm Visual Trends Report 2020 and do a photoshoot based on one of the trends

11. Draw or paint

• Art for Kids hub has easy step-by-step drawing lessons

• The Kennedy Center has a YouTube series called LUNCH DOODLES with Mo Willems, fun and relaxing drawing activities guided by the Artist-in-Residence

• Artsy has a list of 10 University Art Classes You Can Take for Free Online

• Get out your Prussian Blue and Yellow Ochre oils and paint some happy little trees with Bob Ross on Netflix or Hulu

• Do a virtual class with Paint & Sip Studio New York (you can also purchase supplies through their website!)

• Lots of libraries and museums (like the Van Gogh Museum) offer free printable coloring pages based on their collections of artwork, and artist collectives like The Collectors Club have released their own versions

• Or you can do some online coloring on SuperColoring

• Famous illustrators like Wendy MacNaughton (she illustrated Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat!) are doing free drawing classes on Instagram Live

• Let this Random Drawing Generator help you decide what to draw (take a screenshot)

• PBNify is a free custom paint-by-numbers generator

• Or, try a virtual paint-by-numbers

• If you’re not that artistic, try these soothing Magic Painting books—all you need is a paintbrush and water

• NVIDIA GauGAN is an AI experiment that creates hyperrealistic landscapes from your doodles

12. write or journal

• Bullet journal; there are lots of YouTube tutorials (Bullet Journal, AmandaRachLee, Stationary Island, planningwithkay, MyLifeinaBullet), Instagram accounts (@bullet.journals, @bullet_daily, @bujoindex, @marthasjournal), and a whole subreddit to help you get started

• /r/WritingPrompts on Reddit has some great ideas for on-the-go story writing; it’s also a great place to get feedback on your writing

• You can also find writing prompt bots on Twitter, like @MagicalRealismBot (generates a magical story every four hours), @howboutyouwrite (eccentric story prompts) and @censusAmericans (uses real U.S. Census Bureau data)

• If you’re looking for something a little more challenging, try Story Shack’s Writing Prompt Generator

• Free journaling—now is a great time to just record the things that happen in your life on an everyday basis; we’re living through an unprecedented historical event and someday, our personal accounts will be important, especially because we can’t trust the White House to provide accurate information (a writer at WIRED is writing an oral history of COVID-19 and is actively collecting stories if you’re willing to share yours)

• Try Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way—just three, longhand, stream-of-consciousness pages of writing, every morning; the creator, Julia Cameron, stresses that there is “no wrong way” to do Morning Pages: “They are not high are. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand.”

• If you want to journal online, some good sites are: 750 Words (super basic text-based model that encourages you to write 750 words—approximately three pages—per day and keeps a monthly score sheet), Penzu (customizable interface, like a private blog), and Journey (easy to add pictures and connect to your other accounts and devices)

• If you’re looking to build more of a cohesive blog or website, try Wix, WordPress, or Squarespace (I use Squarespace, so if you like how this blog looks, I’d highly recommend it)

• If you’re more of a phone call person, leave your future self voicemails with After the Tone

13. get crafty

• Knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching, sewing, embroidering, and quilting are all crafts that require very few supplies (and are apparently very relaxing)

• Make friendship bracelets (these are great because they’re pretty easy and you can do them alone while watching TV or on a FaceTime call with friends!)

• Try hand-lettering—Mye De Leon has a great beginner’s course called “Styling the Alphabet,” and Lauren Hom releases weekly #HOMwork lettering challenges every Friday and has a free library of creative resources (some personal favorites: Jennet Liaw, Jen Mussari, Colin Tierney, Gia Graham, and Jackie Rivera)

• If you’re doing design work, you can also use Blush for free, customizable illustrations

• Origami is easy, soothing, and requires very few supplies

• Make your own face mask, and if you can, make extras to donate to hospital workers and essential service workers

• Try some unique/creative step-by-step crafts from Instructables

• Experiment with designing your own clothes with TailorNova

• Explore the #DIY tag on TikTok

14. make music

• Korg and Moog are offering their mixing apps for free for a limited time

• Play around with other apps like Launchpad, GarageBand, AudioKit, and TF7 Synth

• Try out professional-grade music mixing software Ableton Live, which is free for the first three months

• If you don’t want to start from scratch, try Madeon’s Adventure Machine or for some 2000s nostalgia, try Magic iPod

15. start building

• Try making your own SMS bot with Google Sheets + Twilio

• Build that coffee table or entertainment center you’ve always wanted

• Build your own miniature pub in your backyard, because why not?

• Try a couple of fun coding projects (some additional project ideas here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)

• Explore the OpenProcessing repository—“creative coding for the curious mind”

16. create some ~content~

• Our House is a 24/7 digital variety show in partnership with YouTube to help artists affected by COVID-19; they pay creators $50 for 30-minute segments and $100 for hour-long segments and are currently open for submissions

• See what all the TikTok hype is about—learn a dance, participate in a challenge, or just watch the videos and enjoy the absurdity

• Finally start that YouTube channel or podcast you’ve been thinking about—a silver lining of quarantine is that it fosters a lot of creativity!

• Or if you’re not trying to share with the public, invite your friend group to make some lo-fi vlogs for each other—skincare routines, Get Ready With Me, apartment tours, etc.

• Get your friend group to start sending weekly email “newsletters” to each other; you can keep it simple/doable with simple bulleted lists of things you watched, listened to, ate, laughed about, photographed, or loved (I am currently doing this with my friends and you can read them here)

• Make a music video à la Rich Brian

• Start an Instagram account to document the things you cook or make in quarantine, things that make you happy, etc.

• Stretch your creative muscles and share what you know (I like to do this in PowerPoint form)

practice

17. do a workout at home

• Lots of fitness studios are offering their online classes for free, like CorePower Yoga and Peloton

• Or, you can look to YouTube channels like Blogilates (she has great series for apartment-friendly and targeted workouts) or Yoga With Adriene

• Attend a Barry's Bootcamp HIIT class hosted on Instagram Live

• Planet Fitness has daily “work-in” classes on Facebook Live at 7 pm EST and an archive on their YouTube channel

• Orangetheory has its #orangetheoryathome daily workout series on YouTube

• Lululemon has a workout series on their Instagram stories and website

• Join a dance party workout on Instagram Live or a virtual Zumba dance workout class

• Practice shadowboxing with Shadowbox training classes on Instagram Live

• Check out FabFitFun's library of workout videos (they have some cooking ones too!)

• ClassPass is offering a collection of 2,000 free live streamed classes, perfect if you want some variety

• Peridance and House of Movement offer every kind of dance—ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary—on live streamed Zoom classes (small suggested donation)

18. do some housekeeping

• Wash things you don’t get to very often, like your makeup brushes and pillowcases and shower tiles (if you’re using a public laundry room or laundromat, here are some tips from an ER physician on how to stay clean)

• Just clean your bathroom (here are some good organization tricks and spot cleaning tips)

• Organize your pantry

• KonMari your room—you’re spending a lot of time there, so make it as comfortable as possible!

• Curate your wardrobe and get rid of things you haven’t worn in over a year—you can donate them to Goodwill or The Salvation Army (the latter has free pickup!), sell them to Plato’s Closet (they buy “current fashion,” so items should be less than two years old), or sell them to other people on Depop, thredUP, or Poshmark

• Old shoes are very difficult to recycle, but Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe (athletic shoes), TerraCycle (leather shoes), and Soles4Souls (all kinds) are great programs if you’re looking to donate

• Donate things you don’t need anymore (VVA is a great resource; they’ll pick up at your house and they accept books, which most donation places don’t)

• Edit your “Following” lists on social media and your email subscriptions (you can use the Tokimeki app to make it easier!)

• Try a tiny spring cleaning project

• Redecorate your room or touch up your workspace—Apartment Therapy and Clever are great for inspiration and simple, low-budget upgrades

• Transfer your photos to a hard drive or delete old or duplicate photos from your phone/computer; you’ve probably been putting it off because it takes “too much time” and now guess what?

• Google your name/username and clean up your digital footprint—now is the time to get rid of all of those random profiles you’ve created over the years

• Buy a seed kit and plant a little at-home herb or flower garden (or use this guide to pantry essentials to see what you can regrow at home!)

• Learn how to make your lifestyle a little bit more sustainable (to balance out all of the takeout, naturally)—here are 101 small ways from Curbed

• Declutter your home with Apartment Therapy’s Spring Cleaning, a 10-day newsletter series of small, doable cleaning tasks sent to your inbox every week

• If you decide to give yourself a quarantine haircut, consider donating the hair to Children With Hair Loss or Wigs For Kids (unlike Locks of Love, they accept colored/grey hair and do not sell the hair they receive)

19. develop good habits/a self-care routine

• Fill out this self-care assessment and make a list of the things you can realistically start doing (you can get some ideas from this playbook!)

• Sign up for Man Repeller’s Thoughtline, a daily text message self-care service—expect “an upshot full of good bits from around the internet and digital recesses to help your mind take a break from the news in favor of a recipe, physical activity or, trust us, very useful WFH outfit ideas”

• Text with a therapist at Crisis Text Line (text SHARE to 741741), Frame, COA, BetterHelp, or Talkspace

• Download a habit-tracking app to help you set tiny goals and achieve them—gamifying it and tracking measurable progress can make it feel more rewarding and satisfying

• Start small and start slowly—habits take time and thoughtful practice, and this is why 88% of New Year’s resolutions fail; instead of big, declarative resolutions, try what Stanford psychologist B.J. Fogg calls “designing for laziness,” or try out the philosophy of “non-zero days”—all of these are essentially ways of rewriting your identity as someone who succeeds

socialize (safely!)

20. Host a party over Zoom or FaceTime

Remember, just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and staying safe is not necessarily for personal reasons but protecting marginalized communities

• As states begin to reopen, here’s how experts rate the risks of 14 summer activities, everyday activities, and social gatherings

• Organize a Drink Talk Learn party

• Host a virtual happy hour—make yourself a cocktail and hop on Zoom to chat or play virtual drinking games (or make up your own, à la True American in New Girl

• Movie night with the Netflix Party chrome extension or create a virtual theater with friends with Scener

• Explore alternatives to Zoom hangouts like Gather, Remo, Rambly, CozyRoom, Spatial.Chat, Topia, and YORB, which feel more like organic gatherings and less like meetings

• Start a book club

• Join or start a Kast streaming room for movies or video games

• Participate in an online dance party (day or night) or online karaoke party

• Design a bracket (for anything—memes, restaurants, episodes of your favorite TV show, Oscar-winning movies, Taylor Swift songs, Completely Random Things That Aren't Related In Any Way, most annoying corporate buzzwords, TV characters of the 21st century, quarantine activities), and argue it out How I Met Your Mother-style until you have a winner

• Or, play debate games like Gentleman’s Disagreement or Don’t Get Me Started

• Play bar trivia from your living room (here is a more extensive list)

• Host a dinner party with friends

• Hop on Zoom and do an escape room together, like Harry Potter Hogwarts Digital Escape Room, The Mystery of Time and Space, Crimson Room, Submachine, Neutral Room Escape Games, Murder Escape, Escape the Prison, Escape the Office, The Doors Escape, Alone Together, or Baba Yaga

• Have your own #Couchella from your living rooms—do your makeup, try on festival outfits you would’ve worn, dance your heart out to a live music stream, and use Kaleidosync to generate visuals that match your music (or create your own mashups from YouTube and Spotify with RaveDJ)

• If you’re quarantining with someone, try date night roulette

• Ruminate on life, death, and existence at a virtual Death Café

21. Play games with friends

• Play Among Us, which works best when you’e not in the same room (I recommend using Discord or Messenger to chat)

• Nintendo Online lets you play classic games like Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Brothers for around $4 a month

• Jackbox Games are interactive party games that you can play with a bunch of people—you purchase it on a game system and everyone enters answers from their phones; we have it on our Switch and my favorite games are Fibbage (The Jackbox Party Pack), Quiplash (Jackbox Party Pack 2), and Trivia Murder Party 2 (Jackbox Party Pack 3)

• Play online versions of party games like Codenames, Scattergories, and my personal favorite, Decrypto (you can use these score sheets or make your own—I’ve found that the best way to play is to have two separate video chats, one with the whole group and one with just your team, and to mute one of them at a time while you discuss clues)

• Facebook Messenger games like Words With Friends, chess, mahjong, Space Invader, Battleship, and Word Shuffle (this last one is strangely addicting)

• iPhone message games like Four in a Row, Mini Golf, Poker, and 8 Ball

• Tabletopia has classic board games like chess and go, but also more niche games like Secret Hitler (here is another nifty guide to online versions to almost every board game you can think of)

• There are lots of independent developer versions of board games/card games like Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Blokus, Scrabble, Uno, Cards Against Humanity, Go Fish, Risk, Yahtzee, Reversi, Avalon, Pictionary, Coup, Secret Hitler, and Dominion

• GOG and indie game site itch.io are offering many of their classic games for free or heavily discounted rates; Humble has a “Conquer COVID-19 Bundle” which contains cheap games, and the proceeds go to charity

• Fortnite and Neopets are free on desktop, console, and smartphone

• Build your own little community in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Stardew Valley, or online with Neopets

• Do a virtual jigsaw puzzle together

• Try The Big Smoke’s Stuck at Home Scavenger Hunt with your family; just email in your completed list of 12 tasks, and they’ll select a winner every Sunday on their Instagram

• Create a homemade Survivor game—get a group of friends together, put together some challenges, and go wild

• Play BuzzFeed’s new multiplayer “Quiz Party,” which lets you take quizzes with friends

• There’s an online version of Just Dance (IYKYK)

22. make mixtapes

• Create collaborative Spotify playlists and invite your friends to add to them

• Host a Spotify Group Session to listen to music simultaneously with up to five friends

• Experiment with Spotify’s developer showcase of apps like Pacemaker DJ (mix songs from Spotify and iTunes), Mangomoji (create playlists from emojis), and Setify (relive your favorite concerts)

• Make playlists with songs that remind you of your friends and send them the finished ones

• Make playlists with songs that have special meanings

• Make playlists for different moods/activities

• Make a playlist with a narrative arc that tells a specific emotional story

• Make a festival playlist for music festival season and send it to your friends

23. Check in with people

• Set up Google Hangouts or FaceTime dates with friends—cook dinner together, play a board game, organize your book shelf, watch on an episode of your favorite show

• Call your parents and family members; listen to their stories and write them down to create an oral history

• Try out the Marco Polo app; it lets you leave little video notes to each other whenever you can

• Talk on the phone with a random stranger on QuarantineChat—just subscribe with your phone number and you’ll get surprise calls from other people in self-isolation

• Instead of asking “how are you?” try asking for a “vibe check” (seriously)

play

24. assorted fun things

• If you’re craving the absence of sports, catch esports tournaments on Twitch, watch Fox’s eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series (on Fox, FS1, and the Fox Sports all, starting at 1 pm EST), relive World Chase Tag and American Ninja Warrior highlights, try the pointless but addictive Blaseball, or check out “Marbula One” (it’s just marble racing, but don’t be quick to judge; it is strangely addicting)

• Some Good Places from The Outline to create positive feedback loops in your brain

• Scroll through Sad Lunch Break (for “eating alone at your computer”)

• All the quarantine tea on The Social Distancing Project

• Navigate this thing from Porter Robinson

• Play around with Experiments with Google, a collection of unique, artistic web experiences designed for Chrome, Android, AI, AR, and more—like the delightfully weird Blob Opera (pro tip: Hit the Christmas tree switch in the lower righthand corner to add some festivity)

• Can you survive being Beyoncé’s assistant without being fired? a Twitter thread, version 1.0 and version 2.0 (a choose-your-own-adventure Twitter thread is absolutely genius)

• Dive into the Zooniverse of “people-powered research,” and help real scientists with ongoing projects

• Explore a random corner of the globe with Random Street View

• Find love on OkZoomer or follow a real-life version of Love Is Blind called “Love is Quarantine” on Google Docs and Instagram

• Rush the virtual sorority ZOOM (Zeta Omicron Omicron Mu)

• Delve into the endless void of The Useless Web, play pointless games like Koalas to the Max dot Com or Pointer Pointer (o try to pause this chicken in its frame—can someone explain the science of why is this so difficult and why it’s so entertaining?!), or the ‘90s-esque weird web of Neal.fun—check your life stats, draw logos from memory, print money in real-time, update some old paintings, share this page, or spend Bill Gates’ money

• Follow The New York Times’ “At Home” daily dispatch or The L.A. Times’ “Guide to the Internet,” full of suggestions of what to eat, watch, read, and do if you’re suffering from decision fatigue

• Plan your next bucket-list vacation down to the last detail—when the quarantine ends, you’ll have a no-fuss itinerary ready to go

• Make a quarantine time capsule and bury it somewhere (you should probably sanitize everything to be safe)

• If you’ve ever thought BuzzFeed quizzes were dumb, you can make an account and submit your own

• Explore the magical world of Harry Potter At Home, with crafts, games, quizzes, and activities

• Nerd out with BBC’s Staying in the TARDIS—a collection of Doctor Who-themed recipes, activities, and videos

• Settle any and all social debates by making your Instagram or Twitter account a poll account

• Try a random challenge (they range from one day to one month!)

• Write a letter on This Website Will Self-Destruct—if no one posts anything for 24 hours, the website will disappear

• Mix and match elements with the simple but addictive Little Alchemy

• For parents: The James Dyson Foundation has a series of 44 at-home engineering challenges designed by Dyson engineers specifically for children (and also an Air Pollution Resource Student Pack)

• Design an alternative life around Zillow listings

• Get paid to transcribe things, train AI, and annotate data with Remotasks

• Explore an Imaginary Soundscape generated by AI, or make your own by uploading illustrations

25. Solo games

• Do a puzzle in real life, or go online; BigPuzzle has a bunch of very pretty 500+ ones

• Play the The New York Times daily crossword (+mini!) and Sudoku puzzles; I sometimes like to compete with friends to see who can get the fastest time (The Washington Post and The New Yorker have some good ones too; the latter can be played with a partner!)

• Take an infinite number of Sporcle quizzes (I loved Sporcle in middle school)

• Wikiracing—the way I learned, you start with a random topic and see how many clicks it takes to get to Hitler

• Play Quick, Draw!, Google’s AI experimental neural network trained by a unique data set of shared doodles

• Dive into Hyperallergic’s list of Creative Video Games to Play While Quarantined

• Play the chaotic Untitled Goose Game

• Get retro with Internet Arcade, a collection of 1970s arcade classics, or RetroGames, which has originals like Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, and Super Mario Brothers

• If you’re feeling nostalgic for the 2000s, babe.net has compiled a list of all of your old favorites like The Suite Life of Zack and Cody: Tipton Trouble, Cory's Money Maze, Hannah Montana: Rock Star Fashion Challenge, Lilo and Stitch's Sandwich Stacker, MyScene Room Makeover, and Barbie Superstar Makeover

relax

26. refresh your mind

• Enjoy the view from a window somewhere in the world with WindowSwap (you can also submit your own!)

• Go on a relaxing drive with the radio on with Drive & Listen

• Headspace is offering a free series called “Weathering the Storm” to help manage stress

• Or use the always free InsightTimer, with over 40,000 free guided meditations for sleep, stress, and anxiety

• Explore visual meditations from Landa Conservatory, “the quietest place on the internet”

• Try an ecotherapeutic meditation in ten steps from The New York Times

• Play this relaxing cloud game with Recess’ press play to pause your thoughts

• Join Re:Mind studio live meditation and crystal sound bowl sessions through Zoom

• Monterey Bay Aquarium is offering “Morning MeditOcean — A Guided Meditation with the Jellies” and live streams of their African penguins, moon jellies, and sharks

• The San Diego Zoo has a bunch of animal cams: Giraffes, elephants, polar bears, apes, and koalas

• Some more animal cams: Kittens, giant pandas, brown bears, and sea otters

• Take a stroll through the Cloud Zoo, a digital zoo made by The Pudding that automatically collects short clips from over 90 zoo and aquarium cams worldwide, updated several times a day

• Enjoy a beautiful HD live stream of Del Mar Beach in California

• Unwind with Yeti+’s offerings of live streams...of actual streams

• Familiarize yourself with grounding techniques to manage anxiety (here is a list of more ways to stay calm)

• Try some mindfulness activities to reduce stress

• Listen to NPR’s playlist of six hours of soothing music

• Lately, I’m obsessed with restoration videos (they’re a bit niche but so satisfying) and also this bossa nova rendition of “Fly Me To The Moon” on guitar by the sweetest little Chinese girl

• Watch a guy build everything from scratch—literally everything, starting with his tools—on Primitive Technology

• Try some food ASMR with gentle cooking tutorials from Cooking tree or Peaceful Cuisine

• Rapper RZA’s Guided Explorations is a five-part meditation series for creatives designed to relax and inspire

• Soothe yourself with a dose of cozy tumblr, a tumblr project full of wholesome and cozy content perfectly curated for staying inside—cute animal gifs, home decor inspiration, and recipe ideas

• Stay updated with John Krasinski’s Some Good News, a news show dedicated entirely to good news

• Follow Netflix’s “Wanna Talk About It?” a weekly series on Instagram Live about managing stress, pairing Netflix YA stars with trusted mental health experts from organizations including National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Mental Health America, The Trevor Project, Crisis Text Line and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

• Play the very satisfying color game Drench

• Watch the beautiful “Magic Hour” sunset in LA or the Northern Lights in Canada every evening

• Let this zen Instagram account soothe your soul

• Try a flower arrangement class with a professional florist and learn how to arrange grocery store flowers from home, every Friday at 6 pm EST on Instagram

• Download some coloring and activity pages from Bando for some mindful relaxation

• This Election Distractor from The New York Times is full of soothing content

• Recreate your favorite bar’s atmosphere with I Miss My Bar

27. get comfy

• Make a pillow fort for reading or watching movies

• Treat yourself to a luxurious bath

• Set up a soothing live stream (Rainy Mood for rain sounds + classical music, a smooth café jazz YouTube channel, a cozy fireplace, a tropical waterfall, a pristine beach, an online lava lamp, this relaxing tearoom ASMR, noisy NYC subway ASMR, or the classic lofi hip-hop radio from ChilledCow)

• Restock your house minibar with alcohol delivery services like Drizly, Minibar, and Winc (pro tip: The Great Brain Cell Sacrifice donates a book to a child in an underfunded community for every bottle purchased)

28. finally catch up on those movies and tv shows that have been on your “to watch” for a while

• Check out Netflix’s “Hidden Gems” genre, Vulture’s list of The 100 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now and The 100 Best TV Shows on Netflix Right Now, or play Reelgood’s Netflix Roulette

• Check out Collider’s list of The Best Movies on Hulu Right Now (Booksmart was one of my favorite movies last year!) and The Best TV Shows on Hulu Right Now

• BuzzFeed has great lists for underrated Netflix movies and binge-worthy TV shows sourced from the community (I highly recommend Derry Girls on Netflix and PEN15 on Hulu!)

• If you like documentaries, DocumentaryAddict and Netflix have a great selection, and PBS NATURE and Nat Geo WILD are always free

• Filmmaker Gary Hustwit is streaming all of his documentaries for free, one movie per week starting on Tuesdays

• If you have a local library card, use Hoopla or Kanopy to access free movies from your library’s archive

• Personally: I recommend Never Have I Ever, Derry Girls, Jane the Virgin, Penny Dreadful, Parks and Recreation, The Haunting of Hill House, and Gentefied on Netflix, and Veronica Mars, Killing Eve, and PEN15 on Hulu

29. work through your reading list

• If you have a local library card, you can usually use it to check out ebooks online or on your Kindle/tablet! (NYPL uses Overdrive, which is amazing)

• Google Play Books, Open Library, and epubBooks all offer free ebooks

• The Project Gutenberg library is an online archive of classic novels whose copyrights have expired that you can access and even download for free

• If you have a shorter attention span, try some essays from The New Yorker or The Atlantic or The Cut

30. START A NEW PODCAST (ALL RECOMMENDATIONS ARE FROM MY FRIENDS and coworkers)

• True crime: Serial, Criminal, S-Town, Small Town Murder, Someone Knows Something

• Politics: Keepin’ It 1600, The NPR Politics Podcast, Radio Free GOP

• Food: The Sporkful, The Splendid Table, America’s Test Kitchen Radio, Bon Appétit Foodcast, Feast Meets West, Home Cooking

• Culture: The SRSLY Podcast, 2 Dope Queens, 1619, How I Built This, Stuff You Should Know, Armchair Expert, Cautionary Tales, Twenty Thousand Hertz, Reply All

• Entertainment: The Watch, Popcast, Switched On Pop, Black Men Can’t Jump in Hollywood, Imaginary Worlds, The Rewatchables

• Economics: Planet Money, 99% Invisible, Freakonomics Radio, Hidden Brain

• Philosophy: Radiolab, Ethics Bites

• Comedy: If I Were You, Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!

31. actually do your skincare routine

• If a ten-step Korean skincare always sounded too complex, here is a guide to get you started

• Other helpful things: the order in which you should apply skincare products, a troubleshooting guide, some guidelines on when to use specific ingredients, and a useful guide to ingredient conflicts

• Use all of the face masks and free skincare samples you’ve acquired at Sephora and Ulta; quick sheet masks are perfect for multitasking, like while you’re doing dishes, journaling, or on a (non-video) conference call

• Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, you can make your own masks—lots of popular publications offer DIY recipes like Allure, Marie Claire, and Vogue (you can usually make these with ingredients you already have in your kitchen and pantry!)

32. cultivate gratitude, and pay attention to the good stories

• Keep a gratitude journal; it doesn’t have to be anything formal or detailed, but keep track of the things that are meaningful to you to help put things in perspective—if you can work from home, if you have a job, if you are healthy, if you actually have time and mental energy to take a break and strengthen connections with loved ones, that is all good

• Crises bring out the best and the worst in humanity, but only the worst gets reported—there are so many people who are making an effort to help others and support their communities

• Wuhan, China shut down all of its temporary coronavirus hospitals and reported no new local infections

• MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, OH developed a COVID-19 test that yields results in two hours

• Researchers in Seattle have already developed and administered an experimental COVID-19 vaccine

• Italy was hit hardest by the virus because it has the second-oldest population in the world

• Antibodies from COVID-19 survivors could potentially be used to treat patients and mitigate risk

• Singapore has released real-time data reports to help track the virus’ movements (contact tracing)

• A 103-year-old woman recovered from COVID-19 after six days at a hospital in Wuhan, China

• The Venice canals are clearing up from lack of boat traffic

• China’s air quality is improving, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives

• There are small moments of joy and humanity everywhere

But most importantly:

• Don’t feel compelled to self-optimize—we’re all adjusting to a new normal, so don’t feel like you need to be hyper productive 100% of the time

• Don’t panic-buy; there are a lot of people can’t afford to stock up on necessities and a lot of communities that are in short supply, so leave some for others

• Wash your hands

• Be kind, and remember that we’re all in this together

happening meow