What will you take with you from lockdown?

I've been thinking about this question quite a bit recently and I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.

The lockdown due to COVID-19 has affected so many people's lifestyles around the world. Not all changes have been bad though.

Here are some positive changes I'll be continuing with whenever we do start to move around a bit more:

• 📹 Social Video Calls: A lot of people will be "Zoom-ed" out by now but I've been loving using it beyond work calls. Every Sunday my girlfriend and I have been on Zoom calls with our families which has become a bit of a ritual. Before lockdown, we would only be all together chatting at big family events or if we traveled to them. So in a weird way, we have actually been talking to our families as a whole more often than before. I've also been using Zoom with friends for poker "home games" where we're all on Zoom while playing on a poker site. Not to mention all the virtual pub quizzes! 😅 It feels silly that we didn't do these kinds of things before as they're such an easy way to catch up with friends and it feels much more sociable than a simple phone call.
• 🚶‍♂️ Staying Local: We can only stay in our local area for our daily exercise. This has meant we're discovering much more about our immediate surroundings and we're loving it! Before, we would hop on the tube (we're in London) and travel for days or evenings out. But there is so much more that we've uncovered about our local area that we can't wait until things start to re-open. I'm just hoping these small businesses will survive!
• 🥘 Home Cooking: I'm sure this is a common one. With both of us in the flat all day, we've put much more effort into our cooking to keep us ticking over for multiple meals. This is something we always made excuses about before saying that we didn't have enough time to put the effort in. But now we're in a routine with it we're really enjoying trying out new recipes and getting more creative.
• 🗓 Controlling My Schedule: I don't work on my business Frontend Mentor full-time. It's still a side project. To pay the bills I teach coding part-time at General Assembly in London. Unfortunately, since the beginning of lockdown, a lot of courses have been canceled due to people not wanting to take them online. This means I've had much more time than usual to work on Frontend Mentor...and I've been loving it! This situation has made me even more determined to grow the business and transition to full-time on it. I absolutely love being in full control of my own schedule and I want to make it happen on a permanent basis.

I'm looking forward to hearing what positive changes you'll be taking with you from lockdown 🙂

Stay safe!