Corona virus disease 2019 has forced a holiday on citizens globally, whether from the formal sector or informal sector. The most hit are persons whose jobs do not guarantee them a long holiday but just shorter leaves during the festive seasons. Even though teachers have a holiday of 4 months spread across the year, they were never prepared for a longer one at this time of the year.No one else did.
There is nothing more frustrating than having to stay indoors broke, bored and tired of nagging partners and hyperactive children. However, if that is the only option to make you get to that job tomorrow, then you must just take it.
For those who have accepted the situation as it is, they enjoy shorter, industrious and very productive days as they wait for normalcy to resume.
Those who have not adapted to the sudden change of circumstances cannot be left behind. Summarized below are some very practical ways of maintaining your productivity during this emergency holiday.
1. Start Learning a Skill Online
Google is the most resourceful material in this century that is less exploited. Those who have used google to increase their skills and competency have a lot to thank it for. Identify your passion and search how to do it online. You’ll get more insights into polishing that area until you became the only guru around. Be it cooking, teaching, parenting, treating, farming, playing a game, among others, you will be more informed by the time COVID ends. It is not a time to sleep as if you are a body, but a time to make your daily schedule and know what do to at what time.
There are so many free online colleges that offer short courses and award certificates. Why can’t you enroll in one, just for purposes of self-building?
2. Engage in a Business Activity
Those who had side hustles before COVID are the luckiest lot since they have an opportunity to manage their businesses and increase their incomes.
Those who were yet to start have that opportunity since they have enough time to spend at home managing their venture. Lack of capital should not be an excuse since the little you have is what is required to start a small-scale marketing enterprise. Right now, there is a very huge demand for consumables since even the local business men are more concerned with liquidity than stock. Why not spend some little to get the basic commodities from a nearby wholesale and sell them even within your house? Remember citizens are subjected to a curfew which only applies in the market centers. Within your house in the village or in a larger estate, you can extend your selling time even up to 2100 hours. You must however be follow all the safety guidelines strictly to protect yourself and your family.
3. Engage in agriculture
Most crops have a maturity period of three months, yet this pandemic is estimated to take at least 6 months. If you have a small piece of land and a burning urge to multiply your earnings, then you are good to go. Identify that cash crop you have always wanted to plant upon retirement and deal with it now. There is excess rain all over and it has been forecasted to be so till earliest July. The good thing is that your children are also at home and can help you with the weeding. Don’t be among the people complaining about rainfall yet you are safe where you are and can use the same rainfall for better gains.
You can also engage in local chicken domestication. Purchase young local chicks and watch them grow for 3 months of this mandatory holiday, then resell them. You will have made more than 300% profit.
4. Plant Trees
Those who planted trees successfully 10 years ago are a living evidence that money grows on trees. This is a long-term investment that can make you multi-millionaire overnight or give you an opening stock for your hardware/ timber yard. Now that you have time and there is adequate rainfall, you can plant and watch your trees grow if you have some idle piece of land. You may be the evidence in 10 years’ time. By the time you are going back to job, your trees will be sustaining themselves and will require very little of your attention.
5. Play with Your Kids
Some of us rarely spend time in our houses due to too much work or too many friends. This is a golden opportunity to be with your partner and kids, if you are married. Exploit it since such opportunities come only once in a decade.
Playing with your kids boost their esteem levels and polish their life skills. Which parent will shy away from a confident child?
Being closer to your wife, with some moderated social distancing, renews your courtship vows and makes your house stronger.
6. Reset Your Goals
Remember you had goals when the year began but the turn of events has made you lose focus of your goals and concentrate on weighty issues like feeding a very large family at a time you never expected, or doing budgets that you never planned for. If you had a project to do in April for instance, you cannot do it since the cash you had set aside has been diverted elsewhere. Why not sit down and plan again?
