How to Stay Productive During a Pandemic with Vanessa Li

I’m sure the survivors of the Spanish flu would agree in saying that a pandemic is a strange time to be alive. A time of such uncertainty resulted in some strange parallels between 1918 and 2020. As those in St. Louis, Missouri stayed at home, Philadelphia threw a parade in honour of the infected soldiers who they believed were suffering just a run off the mill flu.

Are you seeing the parallels just yet?

With COVID 19 upheaving our day to day in unimaginable ways, we’ve managed to find solace in at-home workouts, by getting into quite a dependant relationship with Netflix, and a fairly strange yet synergetic obsession with sourdough. Thankfully though, with the help of the omniscient Internet, we’ve managed to cling onto some semblance of sanity through the blessing of being able to stay connected with one another for support during this time.

For our Dealing with Uncertainty series APRS reached out to Vanessa Li, a fashion and style

influencer and law student at the University of Sydney, to host an Instagram takeover documenting her day in isolation.

Her primary method to stay productive? A routine that she actually follows. And coffee, of course, to kickstart her day and make sure she’s “on task and on routine.” Whilst sipping at her coffee, she starts every day by planning out her routine using Google Calendar. As an early bird, Vanessa prefers to allocate a few hours in the morning to study to maximise

productivity. After lunch, she turns her attention to more creative endeavours by shooting and styling fashion content for her social media platforms.

Graciously enough, Vanessa gave us a quick glimpse of her creative process and how she styles her outfits for her shoots and her incredibly effective and nifty makeshift, at home studio. Her shoot is followed by another study session and a bootcamp-style workout. At this point, Vanessa shared just why she finds it so important to carve out a portion of the day to stay active. “Go for a walk, do some yoga or pilates, try out some body weight workouts — anything is better than nothing. Even though isolation has been chaotic for us all, the one thing that we do have control over is our fitness and our bodies,” she writes on her post work-out video update.

To wrap up her day, Vanessa squeezes in another quick study session after dinner with a parting message inspiring some much needed hope for us all.

“The next time that you find yourself criticising yourself or punishing yourself for not being as productive or just not doing what you planned to do in the day, don’t be too hard on yourself and tell yourself that everyone’s going through the same thing. The most important thing you should be doing right now is making sure that you’re healthy, making sure that your loved ones are healthy and making sure that you’re social distancing,” - Vanessa.

And so, through the power of the Internet and the wonder of Instagram, Vanessa was able to share her journey with us at APRS during these trying times, while motivating and inspiring us to stay positive and make the most of the extra time we’ve been given in the wake of COVID 19.

Written by Darshana Gupta