Beyond #WFH is our initiative to spread positivity and inspire our readers by inviting leaders and friends to share what they do to unwind and relax after they finish their work-from-home and work-for-home responsibilities during the lockdown.
While Covid-19 has had multiple impacts on business and Beyond #WFH is not about business, it’s about self-discovery, things that will give us the strength to get through the lockdown and more importantly for those ‘moments’ that will stay with us for long and beyond this pandemic. PS: We are not talking business!
In this story of Beyond #WFH, we bring to you, Priyanka Mehra, Director, Marketing and Communications, Havas Group India.
After the initial two weeks of figuring out WFH and “work with no borders” as I like to call it, we slowly but surely realized this was going to be for a much longer duration than one might have envisaged.
A routine of sorts set in, primarily dictated by zoom calls and everything they bring with them.
While the obvious silver lining has been spending more time with family and discovering new facets about each other which would include hidden Ludo strategy skills, killer cryptic crossword solving abilities, the revival of cooking lessons learned and more.
Books continue to be my safe haven –
Books have been my safe haven since childhood, I would disappear for hours as a kid with my favorite book, completely oblivious to the world and immersed in the narrative. I still remain an ardent fan of the written word and my love for writing emanates, from all those years of voraciously reading, to date amid the current situation my ultimate safe haven still remains books.
I read multiple books simultaneously the current few I am reading include, Shikandi by Devdutt Patnaik and Neglected poems by Gulzar.
Podcasts to the Rescue –
Being a media professional over the years, I have been a big consumer of social media very organically and that might have been more on the rise in the first few weeks of WFH, since we were all cut off from outside human interaction, an increased consumption of social media happened very organically. Cooking videos and throwbacks dominated our timelines and I am guilty as most, but more recently I have made an active effort to cut back on social media time, since it was getting into a repetitive cycle.
To ensure I am not consuming any “non – positive news” on social media before sleeping, a daily ritual of listening to a podcast every night has vastly helped me disconnect from social media.
I have been an avid podcast listener for nearly two years now, over this past one and a half month I have been religiously listening to and enjoying engrossing and engaging podcasts from the NPR library. I cannot multitask while listening to a podcast and need to give them my full attention so
‘Masters of scale’ and ‘How I built this’ both very well-curated interviews and conversations are my choices.
Experimenting with new dishes – A stress buster
Another activity that I have gone back to is cooking the joy of creation, cooking and baking can give you, has been brought back to me, these last few weeks, experimenting with new dishes is also a total stress buster.
