How many times have you found yourself in a video conference call the last period?

When the going gets tough, be nice to each other. That’s what the saying should have been like. During this corona crisis, you might get disappointed, demotivated, stressed, emotional or frustrated. You can try to be tough and resilient. Whether you are successful in coping with the crisis or that you aren’t, there is one thing we can all do for each other to things easier and that is: being nice. By the way it’s not only good to be nice during this corona crisis, there are several reasons to be nice in whatever circumstances, because....

There is so much we can’t do now and so much we missed due to corona measures. Think about major events like the Batavierenrace or the Dutch Olympic Games for Students that was to be held in Enschede this spring. How about your sport training, your drinks at the study or student association? Maybe you started your bachelor or master assignment at an inspiring organisation and workplaces were locked down?

Procrastinating is the activity –not the right word to use in this case probably – of avoiding to do something. There is so much to find about it, that the question comes to mind: when answers of how to stop procrastinating are everywhere, why are people still doing it? Well, there might be a lot of reasons but procrastinating looking for solutions is probably one of them.

How can you become the best you can be. You might think you need to put in a lot of effort to do so. Well, you are probably right. It takes effort, endurance and perseverance to be the best you can be. But you can only have periods of high performance and focus if you know how to relax. So that is why we want to answer the question of how to have effective breaks.

There is people bringing Christmas trees in to their houses during this corona crisis. Because it reminds them of the cosiness that is related to the period around Christmas. A nice example of how we human beings are capable of doing the strangest things to entertain and fool ourselves.But hey, you have to make something of it somehow, right?

When you have goals to achieve like taking an exam, finishing a report or handing in a research paper you probably know what to do. You will think about ‘creating overview of the task’, ‘planning the necessary activities’ and maybe ‘get out of bed early tomorrow to start studying’. This is not the problem. The problems start when it’s time to bring your plan into action.

Maybe you recognize that you sometimes you have this voice in your head. With a sensible tone it says to you in the morning: ‘you should get out of bed now, shouldn’t you?’ This good-guy-voice reminds you of some things that need to be done, how important those things are and it might even tell you what to think about yourself if you stay in bed. This sensible voice helps you out of bed, but sometimes it’s just not strong enough.

Corona is what we talk about. Of course it is. But have you noticed how much of our conversations are repetitions of things we already know, speculations of what new measurements will be like or how much damage the economy can handle? These are all important things of course, but you can get tired of them sometimes, because they are pretty much about the downside of this all, they are pretty vague and you can’t control them. So when you are looking for something new to talk about …

Sometimes, you just don’t feel like doing what you should do. There is this voice in your head that tells you that you should put some effort in, that you should try harder and that you cannot run away from your duty. But there is also this other voice that says it can be done later, it’s okay to take a break and you just can’t be productive all the time.