For the past months, the Coronavirus has been rapidly spreading across South Korea since its initiation in the Chinese city Wuhan. Because the disease has a tendency to be easily transmitted from one individual to another, many are currently staying at home filled with boredom from pursuing the same activities all day such as watching Netflix, scrolling through SNS feeds, and sleeping in. Here are some new activities for those trying to spend their time at home more productively.  

Exercise

Many people often assume that to exercise, you must go outside to a fitness center or the park for a run. However, there are numerous exercises that you can try out online at your home. For instance, HIIT, which stands for High-Intensity Interval Training, is a popular exercise option that not only produces effective results in getting in shape but also consumes minimal time –– 30 minutes per day at most. In addition to HIIT, there are also 30-day challenges, such as leg, ab, and arm workout challenges that assign a specific daily training routine to help one achieve his or her ideal weight or body shape in a month. Such exercises may be difficult at first, but attempting them in your spare time is a productive way to spend your hours at home. 

Baking or Cooking 

While several people may prefer eating take-out or cooking instant noodles, cooking and baking are cheap, enjoyable, and useful activities worth pursuing. For one, baking and cooking help get rid of ingredients in the fridge that are lying still and untouched; using up leftover ingredients instead of buying or ordering more from stores can help save money and prevent discarding untouched ingredients after they become overdue. Furthermore, baking and cooking are shown to have therapeutic effects since these activities not only distract people from stressful thoughts, but also stimulate senses with pleasant odors and sounds. Finally, learning to cook can be helpful in the future when living alone: when craving a home-cooked meal at college, one could cook him or herself the dish if he or she has learned how to cook. In such ways, baking and cooking can serve to be fun and productive ways of spending leftover time at home. 

Learning useful skills on the computer

There are countless useful technological skills that can be learned at home through electronic devices. One such skill is coding –– the skill of communicating through computer language. While coding may seem difficult and daunting to beginners, it is worth practicing not only because it is unique and interesting, but also since it is a skill that is currently valued by many universities and corporations. Currently, there is a shortage of people who know how to code in companies all around the world; hence, learning this skill now at home would possibly provide advantages in the future. Similar to coding, skills like dealing with excel, photoshop, and Microsoft Office can become useful in the future as well since the majority of companies currently incorporate a massive amount of technology into their work. To learn such skills, search up Youtube tutorials, blogs, and online tutoring classes.