In this article, we share 6 things that out-of-work event professionals can do to stay busy and productive during isolation from Coronavivus (COVID-19).
Quick Answer: Establish a routine, communicate with colleagues, peers, and clients, improve your skills, try something new, get healthy, spend time with loved ones, and document the experience. Use the time to move your life forward.
Help The World or Find Work
If you have any skills that will help in the fight to make the world healthy again, get involved and help get the world back to normal so we can return to producing awesome events.
If you have the option to work, that has to be more rewarding than being stuck at home on employment insurance. It could be an office job, working for your cousin’s fencing company, or doing live streaming for a church; they’re all more rewarding than being stuck home alone.
1. Establish a Daily Routine
The first thing we’d recommend you do is to establish a daily routine. It’s not something we’re used to in the events industry, so take the opportunity to plan and move your life forward in a predictable way.
Once you’ve established a routine, your day has structure, and you can set yourself goals. These are super important for keeping your mind engaged and improving your skills.
2. Communicate With Others
A great thing to incorporate into your daily routine is communication. Spend 15 minutes communicating with 3 people. Mix things up and contact different people every single day; they should be a mixture of colleagues, peers, and clients.
Phone, text, or DM, but avoid email as it’s not a great way to get a fluid conversation going. Stuck on what to say? Keep it simple. “Hey, I miss working with you. How are you doing?” It shows that you care, and you’ll get to find out what they’re up to.
This could give you some great ideas about what you could be doing to use the time effectively.
3. Train and Improve Your Skills
Keep your skills sharp and develop your knowledge and expertise in your field. 2-3 hours a day is enough to make a difference. For example, lighting console companies have created free software and free training videos.
Invest in improving your skills now, and you have the potential to make more money per hour, get more calls, and get more work once the industry gets fired up again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
Other areas to train and develop include Ableton, 3D software, offline editors for audio consoles, or wherever your area of interest takes you.
4. Try Something New
This doesn’t have to be anything to do with event production; it can be anything that interests you that you never had time to do before. Do some home repairs, build a new PC, try to repair some electronics, develop your carpentry skills.
If you have ever considered another career, now is a great time to learn the skills you need and get a taste of what the work would be like.
5. Get Healthy & Spend Time With Loved Ones
With fast food off the menu, more time with our families, and a much better work-life balance, right now is a great time to focus more on your health.
Spend more time with your family, eat better food, and exercise more. Working in the events industry, you don’t often have the time to dedicate to these things. Now is the time to make a positive change.
6. Journal & Document The Journey
There are countless ways to journal and document your daily experiences. Here are 3 things we recommend including in your daily journal.
- Write down 3 things you are thankful for
It helps you maintain a positive attitude when you’re not able to do the job you love doing. - Keep track of everything you did that day
Write a huge bulleted list of everything you got up to. Why? At the end of the day, it’s easy to feel like you didn’t really do anything. It’s important to acknowledge what you have done so that you feel like you’re moving forward every day. - Write down your goals for tomorrow
Write down what you want to be doing tomorrow. That way, you don’t have to think when you wake up; you have a list that you can start working through. Start with a quick win and then build up to bigger tasks or projects.
Remember, this isn’t free time. You don’t want to look back and regret not doing something to move your life forward and make you more competitive for the future.
Equipment Used To Make The Accompanying Video
- Camera: https://currentprice.io/sony_a7iii
- Lens: https://currentprice.io/sigma_24_70
- Microphone: https://currentprice.io/sony_lav
- Studio Monitors: https://currentprice.io/hs5_monitor
- Video Recorder: https://currentprice.io/ninja_v
- Video Switcher For Live Stream: https://currentprice.io/atem_minipro
- Key Light: https://currentprice.io/celeb_250
- Fill Light: https://currentprice.io/astera_ax1
- Uplight: https://currentprice.io/astera_ax5
- Truss: https://currentprice.io/truss_black
- Editing Computer: https://currentprice.io/mac_mini
- Editing Monitor: https://currentprice.io/lg_32in_4k
