49 things to do if you’re staying home due to Coronavirus

Neil Pasricha
3 min readMar 10, 2020

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Have you heard of the Dracula Sneeze?

It’s one example of social distancing being recommended these days along with conference cancellations, work from home policies, and school closures.

In many places it’s all adding up to more home time, family time, kid time, and together time.

If you have a break, how do you embrace it?

Today I’m sharing 49 things to do if you’re staying home due to Coronavirus:

49. Build an amazing couch cushion fort

48. Organize the Tupperware drawer

47. Finally scroll through your Camera Roll to pick out a dozen favorites to print for a photo wall

46. Make a lightbulb vase

45. Garden

44. Start a Reading Challenge with your kids (some ideas here)

43. Read The Story of Us at Wait But Why

42. Do a 7-minute workout

41. Finally clean out that basement storage room

40. Make a mix tape or mix tape playlist

39. Order this book and make paper airplanes

38. Listen to 3 Books (start with David Sedaris, Angie Thomas, or Seth Godin)

37. Prune your apps

36. Read all 1000 awesome things

35. Pick names out of a hat and paint that person’s toenails

34. Read the “Little House” series with your kids

33. Learn how to play chess

32. Go down a 92nd Street Y rabbit hole

31. Pick one of “26 very long books worth the time they’ll take to read”

30. Plan an epic board games tournament

29. Make a Maze Book

28. Watch David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement speech

27. Throw an indoor picnic

26. Go for a walk and wave at everyone from a distance

25. Pick something you know more about than most people and edit the Wikipedia page

24. Pick a year and watch all the Best International Feature Film nominees

23. Pick a country and plan an International Dinner Night with new recipes and music

22. Take Yale’s popular free online course “The Science of Well-Being”

21. Or another free course

20. Pick a blog you love and commit to reading the entire Archive (try this, this, or this)

19. Craft and mail a postcard to PostSecret

18. Write one of those late 90’s-style giant essay updates emails to a friend. Say you don’t need a reply

17. Organize your books in the Dewey Decimal System (use this and this to help)

16. Download Merlin and become a backyard birder (For inspiration, read this.)

15. Watch the most popular TED Talks of 2019

14. Pick one of the (growing) 1000 most formative books to read

13. Put together a care package for a friend or family member

12. Do a yoga class

11. Go on a long nature walk in the woods

10. Pick a room and rearrange all the furniture

9. Start journalling using Two-Minute Mornings or Ahhlife.com

8. Fix something that’s been broken forever

7. Build a stack of pancakes that looks just like the front of the box

6. Organize your filing cabinet, hard drive, or recipes

5. Make a bird feeder out of things lying around your house

4. Paint

3. FaceTime Grandma

2. Check in on your neighbors

1. Forward this email to a friend and pick something to do together

Want to read more books?

I’ve cancelled my newspapers, magazines, and implemented 8 specific systems that help me read 100 books a year.

Download my guide right here!

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Neil Pasricha

Bestselling author of ‘The Book of Awesome’ & ‘The Happiness Equation’ Host of the 3 Books podcast. https://www.neil.blog/