MINISTEERA BARNOOTA XOOPHIYAA

Sababaa Vaayirasii Koronaatiin Barattoonni Miliyoona 25 Ol Akka Mana Turan Taasisame, Jedha Ministiriin Barnootaa Itiyoophiyaa
https://www.voaafaanoromoo.com/a/5386865.html

Sababa weerara Koronaatiin Itiyoophiyaa keessatti barattoni maneen barnoota Idilee Miliyoona 25 ol ta’an barnoota dhaabanii mana akka turan taasifamuu Ministiriin Barnoota beeksise.

Yeroon cufamuu barumsaa kun yoo kan dheeratu ta’e dhawaatni barnooota dhaloota danqamuu akka malu illee dubbatame.

Maneen barnoota dhuunfaas kaffaltii dhibbantaa shantamaa hanga torbaatamii shanii qofa akka kaffalchisan murtaa’e jechuun dubbatan, Minister De’eetaan Ministirii Barnootaaa Dr Garramoo Hlluuqaa.

Gaaffii fi deebii Dr. Garamoo waliin

WHEN IS RAMADAN DAYS???

Ramadan Kareem Calendar 2020

WHEN IS RAMADAN DAYS ??

Ramadan Kareem
According to Ramadan Kareem Calendar, in this year of 2020, the Holy month of Ramadan 2020 ( ٢٠٢٠ ﺭﻣﻀﺎﻥ ) started on 24 of April which was on Friday. And as obvious this Holy Month ended on 24 of May with the start of Eid ul Fitr on the next day. Well these are the dates which are being followed everywhere in the world, but in actual according to Islamic
Ramadan Calendar, this is the ninth
month, and this month starts with the
sight of moon, and same goes for the end of Ramadan Mubarak Calendar as well when moon of Shawwal appears in the sky, which means Ramadan Kareem has been ended and now a joyous occasion of Eid ul Fitr has been started which continues for next 3 days. Usually, Ramadan Kareem Timing continues for 30 days for maximum, but as it depends when the moon appears, so sometimes Ramadan Kareem Calendar 2020 limits to 29 days as well.
As for Muslims, almost every single one of them is aware from Ramadan Kareem
( ﺭﻣﻀﺎﻥ ﻛﺮﻳﻢ ), but there are several
youngsters and non-Muslims as well who have no idea that what actually this month is and for how long is the
Ramadan Timing. Plus they also have no idea that how exactly Ramadan Kareem Calendar ( ﺭﻣﻀﺎﻥ ﻛﺮﻳﻢ ﺍﻟﺘﻘﻮﻳﻢ ) works as well.
Basically, Ramadan Kareem ( ﺭﻣﻀﺎﻥ ﻛﺮﻳﻢ ) comes as ninth in the count of Islamic Calendar, and this is one of the most important Month for Muslims all across the world. The reason is that this Holy month has much more important than
any other, and this month is the best way to seek blessings and forgiveness from God. Besides all, in order to follow the rituals in this Holy month, Ramadan Kareem timetable is being followed which shows up the exact time of Sunrise and Sunset. And the reason that why these two times are important in Ramadan Kareem Calendar 2020 is that Muslims start his Fast from Sunrise till sunset. Actual Meaning of Fast Now for those who have no idea what fast actually is, then while a person who is fasting cannot consume any type of Food or Water, and cannot seek for any
sexual or sinful activities during this time period. And for every single Muslim who has reached puberty are must to fast during this Holy month and stay put to Ramadan Kareem. While for the children who still have not reached puberty are not need to take part in any of the Islamic
Rituals including fast. But that does not mean that they cannot go with the
schedule of Ramadan timetable, or follow up rituals of Ramadan Kareem. Ramadan is also known as Ramadhan or Ramzan. It depends on the language because a single word can be pronounced in several different ways in different languages.

Description of Fasting

It is not limited to the Muslims only to
fast and follow Ramadan Kareem, but
there are several other religions as well who follow the same Islamic traditions, and for some religions, they follow up Ramadan, as in terms of respect for Islam. In Islam, there are five basic pillars around which this religion is followed, and Fasting is the fourth pillar. And that means if you are a Muslim then it is necessary for you to fast when Ramadan Calendar begins. In the Arabic
language Fast is known as Sawm. Now
you might be wondering how does fasting begins and ends up. Well as it is described in Ramadan timetable that your fast is going to start before sunrise.

How to Fast?

So that means you can eat anything you want, and as much you want before Fajar prayer. Once the Fajar prayer has been called up then you must stop eating and drinking that instant. So this will be your breakfast for a whole day, and this time is known as Seher. Once you have
stopped eating then you have to go for
Sehri dua, which is like the start of your fasting. And afterward you have to offer Fajar Prayer, and continue your activities for the rest of the day. Besides from this time onwards you cannot drink or eat something till dawn. For the whole day, you cannot commit any of the sinful activities, and if you are married then
you also cannot involve in sexual
activities.
Importance of Ramadan Calendar
As soon as you hear Maghreb prayer
being called then you can start eating
because this is the time when your fast is over according to Ramadan Calendar. Now when you will start your meal then Muslims prefer to start that with a date, and then they can eat or drink anything that is halal. And the meal that you have at sunset is named as Iftar or Aftar. There
are some areas where it is tough to listen to prayer calls, so Ramadan Calendar is really beneficial because it will tell you the exact time of Seher and Iftar.
Furthermore, you can also find alerts for Seher of Iftar in Ramadan Kareem Timing which lets you open your fast on time. Now you might have seen many Muslims keeping fasts besides Ramadan, well such fasts are known as voluntary fasts. But the fasts of Ramadan Kareem are obligatory and right according to the Ramadan Kareem Calendar. In the earlier times, the fasts of the month of Ashura was also obligatory, but later on, that obligation was changed to the month of Ramadan.

Voluntary Fast

Still, there are many Muslims who follow to keep fasts in the month of Ashura which is voluntary which is their own choice. But there is no sin for those who do not keep fasts in that month. But as for Ramadan Kareem Calendar, it is necessary for every single Muslim to follow, and for those who leave fasts of Ramadan Kareem timetable without any actual reason is wrong. Fasting according to Ramadan does not just mean to stay hungry and thirsty throughout the day, but it actually means to offer prayers 5 times a day, and spend most of your free time while reciting Quran, while staying away from any of the sinful activities. As for praying it is also a pillar of Islam, which means that it is as important as it is fasting.

Lessons Learnt in Ramadan Kareem

Many of the Non-Muslims consider this month as one of the toughest because Muslims have to stay hungry and thirsty throughout the day and to follow Ramadan Calendar while keeping their daily routine as usual. Well, that is not the truth because Muslims all around the world celebrate this Ramadan Kareem with the same joy as they celebrate Eid ul Fitr or any other occasion for the rest of the year. And fasting is as joyous as having a party every day for one whole month. This Ramadan Kareem is not just some ordinary time period of the year, but it comes with several blessings and lessons as well. As you follow Ramadan and keeps fasting throughout the day, then you realize the pain of those poor people who cannot afford to buy food and have to stay hungry for several days.

Tolerance and Patience

Furthermore, fasting also teaches
tolerance and patience in yourself. And not just this but fasting also teaches to stay away from any of the sinful emotions including anger. And when you have to follow Ramadan Kareem timetable for one whole month then, as a result, it becomes your habit for the rest of your life. So, in short, you can call that to follow Ramadan timetable means to turn yourself into a perfect Muslim. Furthermore this Ramadan for several other reasons as well, and among those reasons, the first one is that in this blessed month Holy Quran was completed, and that is one of the four Holy Books of Islam. Holy Quran was revealed to the last messenger of Allah who was the Holy Prophet PBUH. And then among the last ten nights of Ramadan Kareem, there is one night which is considered as one of the most blessed nights of the whole year, and this night is being named as Layla tul Qadr. And whosoever asks anything from Allah on Layla tul Qadr, gets it no matter what that is, but as for Ramadan, there is not confirmed that which night exactly is Layla tul Qadr. So Muslims usually pray maximum in the last nights of Ramadan. Besides, there are certain conditions according to which fasting is exempted, and that will not be a sinful act.

Exemptions on Obligatory Fast

Like if you are traveling or if you are
sick, even if you are aged then it is not
necessary for you to fast. While for
women they cannot fast while they are menstruating or breastfeeding an infant one. Then further as it is discussed above that those children who have not reached puberty yet do not need to follow Ramadan Kareem’s timetable, but it is up to them if they want to start practicing fast at such a young age. This Ramadan is the best time of the year for all the Muslims to wash away their sins by following this Ramadan Kareem. This Ramadan also teaches you many of the life lessons which no one else can teach you ever, so this Holy month is not just blessed but also beneficial as well. First of all, if you see practically then fast, it is
really hard to keep. Because Ramadan
suddenly takes you away from your
normal routine diet all of a sudden which is not normal for anyone.

Ramadan Kareem: Test for all

Muslims So it might take some days for everyone to get used to this new routine. So this is the lesson for everyone to feel the pain of those who are unable to eat food for several days. Furthermore, according to
Ramadan Kareem Calendar of 2020, this holy month comes in one of the hottest times of the year. As for a normal person, it is hard for anyone to skip food or water in normal weather, but for such weather, it is quite unbearable to not have water for an entire. And that is how
Allah tests Muslims by fasting in
Ramadan. Then further there is not even proper time to eating as well if you have to follow Ramadan Calendar. When you have to eat at Seher then, of course, it is
unusual for anyone to eat that time of the day, and obviously, it is the time when you cannot eat enough. Then according to Ramadan Mubarak Calendar when it is time for Iftar then many people try to stuff themselves all of a sudden due to hunger and thirst for all day, but they ended up having stomach disorder as well.

Blessings of Ramadan Kareem

And most importantly at Iftar, it does not matter that what you have on the table because your only focus will be on eating. So this represents that poor people do not wish to eat expensive food when their only wish is to get food twice a day. Then due to Ramadan, your routine of sleeping changes as well, or sometimes
you do not get enough time to sleep.
Because when you are done with Iftar
then after some time people feel hungry once again, and instead of sleep they have to eat once again. Then in the morning, they have to get up earlier in order to prepare food for Seher and then to eat most of it before Fajar Prayer is being called. And when you are done with Seher and Fajar Prayer then there is already time to go to the office. Due to the strict routine of Ramadan, there is no time to complain about the food, so you
have to eat what can be prepared easily. So that is the lesson for you to eat what you get instead of complaining about food even in your normal days. Things not to do Then during fast, you are not allowed to
listen to music or watch any of immoral shows as well, as this is the way of Allah to keep you away from any kind of sins and wash away every single sin of yours. And that is the best opportunity for you to make it your habit. Moreover, due to the strict routine of Ramadan, it is obvious that you will go low on energy with scorching heat and no food. Now,
this might seems to be irritating for some people that they are unable to heat when they do not even have enough energy to carry out normal routine tasks. Well, that is the test of your patience that for how long you can keep yourself in this condition which Allah has demanded from you. As Allah has ordered to Pray five times a day and to recite the Quran
in the routine of Ramadan Mubarak
Calendar, so this is not easy for those
who are more involved in worldly affairs. But as this is an obligation in Ramadan Kareem Calendar so this is necessary to follow as well.
Best time to arrange your Routine
And you might find it tough to manage your time for your office and Godly affairs as well. No doubt this is the best time of the year to manage both tasks accordingly and keep this routine for the rest of the year. You might consider fasting as a burden, but actually, if you will follow Ramadan then it is not just good for you spiritually but also good for
your health. And it is even proved
scientifically as well, as after that many nutritionists follow diet routine just as the routine of fasting. And where other nutritionists are charging hundreds of dollars from their clients then at the same time you are having this natural routine for one whole month by following
Ramadan Mubarak Calendar. If you are thinking that you are giving up something by following Ramadan then you need not worry about that because Allah will never put unbearable burden over you. Help those who are Unable to Afford
Always be thankful for what you have
instead of complaining about what you have lost because whatever you are losing is for your own good, if not in this life then for life afterward. Now as you have benefits and lessons for Ramadan Kareem, next comes your duties that you should follow which you have already learned from those lessons. Fasting is obligatory for every Muslim except those with special conditions. But there are some people who wish to follow Ramadan
traditions as well, but they are even
unable to afford food for Seher and Iftar. So make sure that you must notice in your surrounding for any such people, and purchase everything that is necessary for them to eat during Seher and Iftar. Even if you are unable to afford food for a whole month, then at least provide them with few things which they can use. Furthermore, there is no doubt if you are following the routine of
Ramadan Kareem, and working hard as well in the office.

Help Women prepare Meal

But you must notice that on the other
hand women are also performing house chores for the whole day, and when you get back home then they are still preparing a meal for everyone for Iftar. If your task is not easy then you should know that their routine is also not a piece of bread, and that is why you should help
them with Iftar preparation as well. As there is no doubt that males are higher in strength, so even with a hectic office
routine they can still help their Mother, wife, or daughters to prepare Iftar, and more importantly, it is your fair share. While you are in the office, there might be several of your colleagues who are not following Ramadan and having lunch. So even if you see them eating or find out
that they are not fasting then do not tease
them. You would never know the reason why they are unable to fast, so you have no right to make fun of them or tease them in front of everyone. Besides if you are still concerned to find out the reasons then the best way to do that is to discuss it in person with your colleague so that he does not have to feel embarrassed about that. Do not Tease Others And it might be possible that he is going through some health problems which he
has not discussed in office yet, or if he is going through some serious problems back at home. You cannot judge anyone by just looking at them. And this is another lesson for you that you will learn by following the Ramadan Calendar. And if your Colleagues are working outside in
scorching heat, then the best you can do for them is to arrange cold water, and meal for them as a good deed. While you are following Ramadan you will be saving much of the money that you were spending before on the food. So it is best that you donate that money among the neighbours or relatives who are unable to afford food and other daily necessities.

Keep Helping Poor

Besides as there will be Eid ul Fitr right after Ramadan Kareem, so with that donation those poor people can buy some clothes and food for that occasion as well. On every Iftar, many families prepare a lot of food, but they are unable to consume all of it on Iftar. So instead of wasting that food, you must share that food with your neighbours as well which you think is unable to get enough food over Iftar or even Seher. Even Islam teaches us to look in the surrounding for all the needy people, and if Allah has blessed us with money then it is our duty
to donate it among the poor as well. And all this would be only possible if you are able to follow Ramadan Kareem Calendar, and teaching of Allah in a proper way during the month of Ramadan Kareem.

http://www.RamadanKareemCalander.com

U.S CORONAVIRUS WAS DO TO PROLONGED,UNPROTECTED CONTACT

A woman who traveled from China to Illinois in mid-January likely transmitted the novel coronavirus to her husband through “prolonged, unprotected contact,” according to research released Thursday. None of more than 300 people who came into contact with the two patients after they showed symptoms, however, developed symptoms of their own. The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, detail the first known transmission of novel coronavirus in the United States, and suggest that the virus may transmit most easily through extended contact with infected people, not brief or casual exposures. “Our experience of limited transmission of [the virus] differs from Wuhan where transmission has been reported to occur across the wider community and among healthcare professionals,” said Dr. Jennifer Layden, referring to the city in China where the virus first emerged. NEW #COVID19—First known person-to-person SARS-CoV-2 transmission in USA occurred between 2 people with prolonged, unprotected exposure when 1st patient was symptomatic. No further transmission detected in 372 contacts of both cases https://t.co/tF0htFQrAn pic.twitter.com/3shqCuoMpZ— The Lancet (@TheLancet) March 12, 2020 Layden, the chief medical officer of the Chicago Department of Public Health and co-leader of the research, stressed that health care providers should still “rapidly triage and isolate individuals suspected of having [the virus]” and notify local health departments. That’s because, according to the study, “infection control measures within the hospital setting and an aggressive public health response” to these first cases might have prevented widespread coronavirus exposure. And it’s possible that other patients — those with more severe illness, for example — may transmit the virus more easily. Questionnaires and security camera footage helped identify possible contacts Working with local, state and federal public health investigators, researchers identified more than 300 people who had contact with the two coronavirus patients. Among those contacts were 195 health care workers who were tracked down using patient logs, staffing records and even security camera footage. After asking patients about their interactions and travel history, researchers also identified 152 additional people — “community contacts” — who may have been exposed to the virus. In total, 372 individuals were found to have contact with the two patients, and 347 underwent active monitoring to look for coughing, shortness of breath or fever. While 43 people developed symptoms and became “persons under investigation,” none of them tested positive for the coronavirus. Study is small and limited, researchers say The researchers cautioned that their findings are preliminary and based on a single transmission event, which might not represent the population at large. The study had other limitations, too. Because they relied on memories to reconstruct people’s movements, investigators might not have identified everybody who came into contact with the coronavirus patients. And those who were identified as possible contacts were monitored for symptoms — meaning that researchers would have missed “asymptomatic” infections, where people could contract and transmit the virus without feeling ill. In a sample of 32 health care workers without symptoms, all tested negative for coronavirus, suggesting that none had an asymptomatic infection. But that sample was a minority of the 195 health care personnel who came into contact with the infected patients. It’s also possible, the researchers said, that a single coronavirus test may not be able to accurately diagnose infections, given that the virus’s incubation period can last for up to two weeks after exposure. New criteria from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also say that health care workers should be evaluated for the virus even if they show mild symptoms — such as a sore throat — that the study didn’t look for. Despite its limitations, the research does suggest that quarantining those with “high-risk exposures” to infected patients may help reduce the virus’s spread, said one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Tristan McPherson, from the Chicago Department of Public Health. “Without using appropriate facemasks or other personal protective equipment,” he said, “individuals living in the same household as, or providing care in a non-healthcare setting for, a person with symptomatic [coronavirus] are likely to be at high risk of infection.”

During Lockdown

A three-step technique for creating space, slowing down and enhancing creativity.

“When one has much to put in them, a day has a thousand pockets.”

– Nieztsche

One of the challenges of living, working and socializing all from home during this Pandemic-induced lockdown is that the spatial structure of our days has been largely dissolved: where before we’d have a repertoire of different spaces for different activities, now everything’s happening at home.

If you think about a typical pre-COVID day for someone who works in an office for example, events are naturally distinguished by where they take place.

In my case, I’d get up, exercise in the park, cycle to the office, work and have discussions in different meeting rooms, go out for lunch, return to the office, go for a walking meeting, perhaps zip across town for a meeting in a café; and then after work, I’d often meet someone for food and sometimes go a concert or an exhibition: all in different, distinct locations… in short, my day would have as its backbone an elaborate spatial journey.

But with this lockdown, even though much of the content of my former lifestyle has been recreated digitally (including the parties- the subject of another post), it’s all now happening in my flat on my laptop. So all this experience has lost any meaningful spatial component.

The troubling consequence of this is that the day can feel without shape, and time can seem to slip past; it’s relatedly more difficult to remember what happened… and despite in some sense now having more time… it’s easy to feel as though I have less.

Moreover, without clear demarcation of work and home life, the preoccupations of the day naturally infest my evenings… it becomes more difficult to turn off, and equanimity and mental freshness can suffer.

Having struggled with this, I’d like to offer an analysis of why this happens based on how we humans apprehend time and space, followed by a three-step technique for structuring your home-life during the lockdown in which you can conduct a substantially more spacious, creative and calm existence.

Before we get to that, though, let’s consider how we relate to time and space cognitively, to understand our options.

How we experience time

Space and time are deeply interconnected in our way of understanding the world, and indeed time is mostly conceived through spatial metaphors.

We compute these metaphors so effortlessly, that we’re rarely aware of their presence in our experience. But whenever we “squeeze in a trip to the gym between meetings” or “look forward to the summer”, or talk of “distant memories” a “crowded schedule” or “way back when” or indeed when we enjoy “bitesize” content or bemoan the boringness of a “long argument”, we’re borrowing our mental mastery of space to imagine and reason about time.

Specifically, our spatial metaphors for time carry an underlying mapping:

  1. time = space or journey through space
  2. moments of time = locations or objects in that space

These metaphorical schemas are amazingly flexible and sophisticated. When we say a busy day is “back-to-back” with meetings, we’re imagining the day (time) as a container (space) and our activities (which take time) as objects (smaller space-occupying entities) filling that container. In this example, the objects fill the container so tightly that they press against each other, leaving no space (i.e. time) for that coffee at which you wished to pick my brains, or whatever. Therefore, even if I just respond “sorry I’m back to back” you immediately grok my meaning.

This is of course taken to a nefarious extreme by calendars, which reduce time to a grid of boxes in space- with very potent, and many regrettable, consequences for our experience of our lives. That though is a different subject to the one we have on our hands here.

Now, while the high-level mapping of time to space is almost ubiquitous in cognition, there are interesting cultural and contextual variants. In Chinese culture, time goes up and down, not forward and backward, as it does in western cultures. We’ll avail ourselves of that flexibility later. Even with the forward/backward time relationship in English, we flexibly use different sub-variants, without necessarily realizing that that’s what we’re doing.

“Wednesday’s meeting has been brought forward by two days. What day is it now on?”

Some will say “Monday”, others “Friday”. Both make perfect sense, but which you choose depends on whether you imagine from an object- or observer-centric framework. In the observer-centric case, the event currently sitting in the space of Wednesday is an object being brought forward towards you, the observer, which will land it on Monday; but if you assume an object-centric perspective, you are Wednesday and move forward two days in time, landing on Friday. Check our Lera Boroditsky’s extraordinary work on the embodied cognition of time, from which these examples are taken.

Anyhow, this mapping of time to space is of course a good design principle for the mind, since, in the normal peripatetic run of things, different events happen in different spaces, as we saw earlier with my routine. This natural pattern or constraint cascades down into how memory works: indexing very thoroughly on the spatial. We remember things primarily by where they happen, and only indirectly by when. This is incidentally why “memory palaces” are such a potent device for remembering things in sequence (i.e. time): they leverage our powers of spatial recollection to structure long temporal sequences in our imaginations through imagery.

Why living all of life in a confined space can mess with our sense of time, and feel cramped and stressful.

We’ve seen how our experience of time is rooted in our apprehension of space, and how this is reflected in memory. So when we stop moving around over the course of the day, we shouldn’t be surprised that it messes with our experience.

And this is why a day spent all in one spot will tend to feel like it’s passed quicker: as we experience the sequence of activities in our day, each is a little bit less distinctive and differentiated than it would be under normal conditions because it lacks spatial context, and the different portions of the day then bleed into each other.

This interfusion of the different parts of the day diminishes them all. Your yoga headspace carries into your work headspace carries into your argument with your flatmate headspace carries into your creative time headspace, and the resources of your mind are never fully focused on any one of these things.

And this lack of distinctness to individual moments in your day has its flip side in memory, where because there are no spatial hooks for it to gain purchase on, it becomes difficult to remember what we did: there are no differentiated locations to trigger recollection. It’s as if all the photographs have been made on top of each other on a single print.

And when we lack spaciousness like this, things quickly begin to feel claustrophobic, monotonous and stressful.

How we can control our experience of space and time using our imaginations.

We’ve seen that time is spatial, and that when we take spatial experience away, it can be stressful and confusing. What to do about this?

Well, it turns out that our dependence on space is both the disease and the cure to this one: by imagining and relating to our spaces differently, we can regain control of our experience of our time.

In order to manipulate back into health our diminished experience of time, that is, we simply have to manipulate our experience of space- with the tools at our disposal.

This might seem tricky, given we’re stuck indoors, but in fact our experience of space is much more highly contextual, subjective and full of opportunities for alteration than we normally imagine, or commonly admit.

This is because space as it arises in our experience (which we often confuse with the space of physics) is not a feature of the world, but of our relationship to it. By changing how we relate to our home spaces, we can transform them.

One way of seeing this is to think of how we tend to be surprised when we revisit places last seen in early childhood: they seem much smaller than we remembered, because when we were small they were relatively bigger in relation to us.

This phenomenon goes way beyond the size of our bodies, into their skills, interests and athleticism: people with heavy backs perceive slopes as steeper, for example; we experience the world in terms of how we can act within it.

To get a handle on how our experience of space is our experience of our possible movements, ask yourself this: have you ever had the strange experience that an empty room can come to feel larger when it is filled with furniture?

How can this be? Well, one way of thinking about this is that now the space is structured, there are more opportunities for movements than before: it, therefore, is bigger so far as your body is concerned.

On top of this, we don’t experience spaces devoid of their emotional, social and pragmatic contexts. Space isn’t just a container, but a field of action, pregnant with significance: for example, people can tell almost as much about your personality by looking at picture of your office or bedroom than they can from meeting you personally.

A carpenter’s studio invites a totally different set of actions than a kitchen and feels correspondingly different- even if laid out much the same. Changing the colour of the walls of a room can make it feel more spacious, warmer, more formal, more calming.

So we see from all of these examples that our experience of space is highly embodied, contextual, and subject to all manner of emotional layerings. This gives us a clear set of tools for how to change our experience of time in a restricted space: by manipulating our patterns of behaviour, emotion and perception.

With this analysis in our back pocket, let’s look at five strategies that can be deployed against the problem of expanding subjective time in the lockdown, which collectively add up to turning your home into a kind of memory palace.

The three-step technique

  1. Divide your home into a set of distinct locations, with activities for each

Your home is your new city. Let’s kit it out accordingly.

Of course, we need to work with the tools at our disposal: which will seem meagre to begin with, but all of which we will see can be applied to an arbitrarily small space.

First, choose ten activities you want to accommodate in your lockdown

Ten activities is a good basic repertoire. I do in my life: sleep, yoga, reading, washing, working, writing (managerial), work (creative), exercising, partying, eating/socialising.

Your repertoire will, of course, be different depending on what you like doing, and need to do. It’s actually quite fun to reflect on your life and make a list of ten best-version-of-you core activities. Not a bad moment to dig out that list of unactioned new year’s resolutions: that habit of a daily workout? Now’s a good time to actually begin doing it.

Another way of finding your ten activities, is simply to think “what are the activities I’d love to be able to do somewhere else, but I can’t”?

Whichever way you create your list, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of honest, joyful self-reflection.

Next, find ten locations around your home to which to assign these activities

Reminder: to be calm during the storm, we want to have clear, differentiated spaces in which we can conduct the activities of our new life in a way that we are “insulated” from distraction, and in such a way as to foster calm, creativity and joy.

So the next step is to select ten distinct locations within the overall space of your home, to which you’ll uniquely assign these actvities.

For me, I had to choose ten locations across the four available rooms to me: bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen. If you have more space than this, be expansive. If you have less, zoom in.

You really can do all this in quite small spaces. The only constraint here is to ensure these locations are each at least a metre or so apart from each other. I think it would be just about possible with a bit of creativity to do this in the smallest flat I ever lived in, a 3x3m garret in Paris in my early twenties.

Not having much space to play with is actually part of the fun. I’m grateful I don’t live ibn a castle: it would remove the opportunity for creativity.

To illustrate, I have had to set up four different locations in my sitting-room, for example, and three in my bedroom. Neither room is especially large. One important trick when you are creating several locations in a small room, is to ensure that when you’re in those spaces, that you’re pointing in different directions: out of sight is out of mind, and this will help them differentiate the locations later and make them feel “insulated” from each other. In this way, in that old cell-like flat in Paris, I’d have arranged the spaces “looking outwards” roughly in the four corners, and against the four walls, with a space in the middle to get to ten.

Assign activities to locations

After you’ve chosen ten locations, link the activities to them uniquely. I have several types of work requiring a desk, and so I have set up three tables in my living room and I move tables to do different kinds of work.

So, zooming in on my livingroom, we have three desks, pointed in different directions, for different kinds of work. The Eastern desk (in front of the window) is for working on managerial tasks at Memrise -a diversity of tasks. The Southern-facing one (less than 2 metres away) is also for working on Memrise, but this is for creative work- which I especially enjoy, but which can be difficult to find intellectual and emotional space for in the course of a busy day. The third desk (facing West) is for writing. This way, I’ve created differentiation between these kinds of work.

My full list of locations and activities is then this:

  1. Bedroom: Bed (sleep)
  2. Bedroom: floor by bed (yoga)
  3. Bedroom: Rocking chair by window (reading)
  4. Bathroom (washing)
  5. Sitting room: East wall (working)
  6. Sitting room North wall (working)
  7. Sitting room West wall (writing)
  8. Sitting room: space in middle (exercising)
  9. Kitchen (eating)
  10. Bar counter between kitchen and living room (partying)

Now’s the moment then to get

2. Imaginatively amplify the distinctiveness of these spaces

We now have different locations for different activities. The next step is to amplify. their felt differentiation using our imaginations, and a few props.

Remember, space is a space by dint of the full gamut of the perceptual and emotional experience that is taking place within it. So we can change space by manipulating the experiences

Our key levers here are:

  • The activity itself
  • Props (photos, hats, lamps)
  • Lighting
  • Music
  • Aromas (candles, food)
  • Simple imagination.

To see how we can leverage these easily controlled inputs to create differentiation, let’s look at some examples.

Bathroom

I’ve kitted out my bathroom as a Hammam (by adding a chair, a kettle, and some imagination). Where before, I’d be in and out in five minutes, I now hang out there for 30 minutes with my (imaginary) friends, the room steamed up by running a lidless kettle into the corner and letting it boil.

Sitting room (4 locations)

In my sitting room, I’ve set up, as we saw, four locations: three separate desks and exercise space.

To stop them interfering with each other (i.e. feeling like the same space), I ensure with music, props and lighting that each has an entirely different feel and vibe to the others: to go along with the different patterns of activity and so on.

So when I’m at the East Desk (reserved for Memrise managerial work) I have a fully differentiated multi-sensory set-up that changes the character of the whole room, and effectively makes the location I’m at feel like a totally different space.

Specifically, when sat this desk, I keep all the curtains drawn, play Balkan music whenever I’m say there and imagine I’m in Croatia. On my desk, I keep a photo of Novak Djokovic and hanging on the nearby cupboard is a traditional Croatian dress. All of these things in combination give the location the feel of a totally different room.

If I then move to the North desk (which takes me ten minutes, as we’ll see later) I open the curtains, change the music to jaunty Italian Tarantella, and enjoy a spacious paper-only desk environment. On the wall in front of me is a view of the Italian town of Cividale that I once ineptly painted. No matter, I imagine it as a window and I’m in Italy, doing wonderful free creative tasks. Again, it feels like I’m not only in a different room but in a totally different country.

The West desk is for writing: things like this blogpost, love letters to my girlfriend (currently quarantined in Burgundy, France), and other purely verbal activities. The wall in front of me is covered in bookshelves. Since this is a space of pure ideas, and we’ve already established it’s in effect possible with these techniques to change country, I take it a bit further here and imagine I’m entering into a beyond-worldly magic space of pure imnagination. The music genre here is jazz, and since I tend to sit here at night, the lighting’s also naturally different. My props here include my computer, but I keep the internet off to aid the sense of isolation.

Kitchen

I visit the kitchen three times in the day, but I make sure that each feels like a different experience.

My kitchen in the morning is a French Café. I drink coffee while listening to French radio. I eat a croissant. I talk to myself in French. I complain about the government. No mobile phones are allowed.

It’s all very different in Berlin (lunchtime). Here I’m in Kreuzberg, surrounded by hipsters. I’m listening to Wagner. I’m talking to myself in German. I’m actually not listening to Wagner, I’m playing café sounds to give me a sense of being in an energetic social spot.

In the evening, there isn’t a specific nationality to the kitchen: it’s more of a guest spot for different cultures depending on what I’m cooking. Devices are actually allowed in the kitchen in the evening (as I like to dine over Zoom with a friend and a bottle of wine).

But all in all, the kitchen manages to be three spaces only through changing up the food, the attitude, the music, the props.

Bedroom

My favourite location is the rocking-chair by the bedroom window. I’d picked this up off the street years ago and it had sat there broken and never-sat-upon as a vague never-quite-prioritized to-do item.

Self-isolation and duct tape dealt with that, and now I can read before bed while calming myself down after the energetic day by rocking myself back and forth. An aromatic candle further changes the mood, and my bedroom is now a no-device zone so if there’s a disaster I won’t get to know about it till tomorrow morning.

In sum

You won’t land on a set-up this elaborate overnight. You can gradually experiment and find what feels right in terms of props, music, rules, lighting, and activities in each location around your home.

But the basic principle is very simple: by behaving in thought, imagination and action as if each location is an entirely different space/room/country, you make it feel so.

And this does a massive amount to free us from the sense of claustrophobia and time-disappearance that living all day in one place can occasion.

3) Design your preferred daily adventure, then perform it.

Our next step is to build a schedule for our days that travels through our newly invented repertoire of spaces: which may now exist in many different countries, yay!

Designing your daily journey

But schedules suck. They constrain and control, and we don’t want too much of that. So the way we’re going to organise our day’s activities is to transform our schedule into more of an adventurous travel-journey. Doing so is pretty simple: we just need to decide on our itinerary.

To do this, simply pick a path through your new city-home that fits with what you need to do across the day. Writing it down helps. This is your daily journey in the new imagination-built city in your home. Hopefully, we manage through this tool to construct a daily routine as exciting as any that ordinary life could offer.

Performing your daily journey

We have all the pieces in place, now we just need to begin performing them.

A few tips follow as to how to do that in the most effective way possible.

Stick to your itinerary

Itineraries work best when you stick to them, so keep a softly sounded alarm of some kind to let you know when it’s time to move on. Pomodoro is a good tool for this.

Consider changes in costume between activities

Often in normal life, we habitually change clothing for the different activities in our day: with different outfits for work, gym, socialising etc.

It’s good to reproduce these habits in our new city-home. Even small changes do good work to make different moments feel different: the addition of a hat, putting on a jumper, changing our shoes. And they take hardly any time to implement.

Use physical activity to amplify transitions between spaces

A dominant feature of our experience of spaces, and of times, is landmarks and moments of significant transition. This is why rituals are so important to creating experiential space: they act as tools to amplify transitions in our moods.

To boost differentiation between moments in our day, getting moving acts a ‘reset’: there’s nothing like it to freshen yourself physically and emotionally. My current favourite mode of doing this is dancing socially for five minutes: by powering up Zoom and getting on a virtual dance party. But press-ups stretches or even jumping jacks equally get the job done.

My advice is to aim for one of these approximately hourly and to deploy them even if you’re not changing location.

Consider adding a “travel-time” layer

This one is for the advanced practitioner.

Let’s return to our core inspiration: the city. The nature of a city is that it takes time to get between places, which enriches the overall experience and introduces breaks and stimulation between activities. To solve the problem of an absence of the experience of travel-time and the consequent reduction in felt spaciousness, we have to add these back in with a bit of embodied, performative imagination.

The baller options here is to magnify the scale of your flat by simply forbidding yourself from moving at a normal speed between rooms. After extensive experimentation, I’ve found that an allowed pace of 1-2cm/second works well for moving between spaces (this only applies to changing locations, by the way, you’re going to need to move around at your desk at normal speed). But I wouldn’t recommend this on day one, you won’t have the discipline yet.

Whether you choose a physical activity or slowed movements, in time these embodied practices begin to make the whole flat seem much larger. Space is, after all, relational. And there are in fact numerous additional benefits to this approach. You realize, for example, that there’s a ten-minute walk or ten press-ups between you and the fridge (even though it’s just 6m away), and so you begin to find it much less tempting to grab a snack mid-task.

An example schedule

Here’s an example of what a schedule can look like, once you’ve divided your home into ten locations for unique activities, and ‘gamified’ the transitions between the spaces.

  • 6-6.15 a.m. Wake up, travel to Hammam
  • 6.15 -7 a.m. Wash, hang out in the Hammam, dress
  • 7-7.30 a.m Commute to Paris (kitchen), while listening to a podcast
  • 7.30- 8 a.m Enjoy Parisian breakfast, coffee, French radio.
  • 8-8.15 a.m. Commute to Croatia (East desk)
  • 8.15-12.30 a.m: Croatia. Management work / meetings on Memrise. Occasional breaks to dance between tasks.
  • 12.30-1 p.m. Freshen mind with 30 min stroll through the Park (central living room) on way to Berlin.
  • 1 p.m- 1.45 Lunch: Berlin lunch.
  • 1.45- 2 p.m. Commute to Italy while calling family members.
  • 2-4 p.m. North desk: creative Memrise work in Italy listening to Tarantella
  • 4-4.15p.m Jog to Croatia (through park)
  • 4.15-6.45 p.m More Memrise management work in Croatia (East desk)
  • Travel to Ukraine (kitchen, last night)
  • 7 p.m. Cooking and dinner with friend over Zoom
  • 8- 8.15 p.m Travel by bicycle to the West desk (realm of pure ideas)
  • 8.15p.m- 10.15 p.m. West Desk writing in pure realm of ideas.
  • 10.15p.m.10.30 p.m. Walk home to bedroom.
  • 10.30-midnight: Rocking chair reading until sleep.

If suitably enacted, each of the events in this schedule will be insulated emotionally and mentally from the others and will lead to gloriously pure and focused consciousness, as well as a very clear recollection of the events once they’re completed.

To sum it all up

Time in the lockdown can slip away from us, and disturb our mental tranquility. Being locked up inside our homes can be claustrophobic, stressful, boring and uncreative. This simple methodology will allow you to free yourself from these issues.

By combining perceptual, bodily and imaginative techniques, the featureless open scape of a day at home can assume all the spatial trappings of an adventure out around a city, with all the benefits of fun, memorability and distinctiveness, but none of the incidental opportunities for contracting COVID-19.

When you get this method spinning, you’ll feel calmer. You’ll feel like you have more time in the day. You’ll be able to concentrate with a greater purity of focus. You’ll be able to do more different things throughout the day. And you’ll have a tonne of fun while you’re doing them, which is something we all need a bit of in our lives right now.

Finally, with luck, you may find that the core principles underlying this technique will serve you well even when you’re back to living out in the world again. I’m certainly intending on keeping the bedroom as a no-device zone, and on keeping the Hammam too: if nothing else, this lockdown has taught me that I have been under-using my bathroom like a muppet.