#stayathome 2.0 – How to survive the second lockdown

If you’re reading this now, the second lockdown is long gone-and with it that feeling that four weeks in a flat would never end. Still, it’s worth looking back: three of the ideas we shared in December 2020 didn’t remain stopgaps; they turned out to be pretty solid templates for any quiet stretch where you want to make more of your time.

Back then it sounded like small consolation: no restaurants, no cinemas, no weekend in Hamburg? Fine-then DIY, journaling, and living-room yoga it was. From five years out, it looks different. The activities that carried us through winter 2020 weren’t stopgaps. They were a mini-course in a subject that usually drowns in a busy life: choosing, consciously, how to fill your free time.

DIY Gifts: the tip that pays off every December

The first idea from 2020 was simple. Instead of staring at blank walls, use the weeks before Christmas to prepare gifts-preferably handmade ones. Back then it was practical because shops were closed anyway. It’s still practical today because it combines the best of two worlds: you avoid last-minute stress, and a gift infused with your own effort says more than a hastily bought voucher.

The only difference between then and now is the setting. In 2020 you had no choice but to get creative at home. Today it’s a conscious decision against the frenzy of the last December days. Pickled goods, a bound photo album, a playlist with notes on every track: it takes time, and in December you rarely have large blocks of it. Whoever starts early gives more thoughtfully.

What looked like a makeshift solution in 2020 was in truth a crash course in a rare luxury: choosing for yourself how to spend your time.

New Routines: why 21 days is a myth

The second idea was to build a new habit. The original text cited the well-known claim that the brain needs 21 days to learn a behaviour and 66 days until it becomes automatic. We must correct that part, because the 21-day rule is a popular misconception. It traces back to an observation by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz in 1960, who noted his patients needed about three weeks to get used to their new reflection. Over the decades this became an allegedly hard-and-fast rule for any habit, never actually tested.

The solid figure comes from a study by psychologist Phillippa Lally at University College London. Her team tracked 96 people for twelve weeks while they built a new everyday habit. Result: on average it took 66 days before a behaviour felt automatic, with a wide range from 18 to 254 days. Simple habits like drinking a glass of water with meals solidified faster; demanding ones like daily exercise took significantly longer. Four lockdown weeks therefore weren’t enough to anchor a routine permanently, but they were more than enough to get started-and experience shows that’s the hardest part.

One detail from the same study takes the pressure off: missing a single day barely set participants back. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to keep coming back, even after a gap.

Learning Something New: from scratch in four weeks

The third idea was the most ambitious. Handstands, drawing, running ten kilometres straight: pick a skill you’ve always wanted to master and begin. In 2020 the logic was that four weeks without appointments or distractions would provide enough practice time. That still holds true today, pandemic or not. The real bottleneck in learning is rarely talent; it’s the hours you invest regularly.

If you practise daily for four weeks, you rack up an impressive amount of repetition-especially for things like drawing or a new language where progress emerges from many small steps. We stand by the promise from the original text that after four weeks you’ll have reason to be proud of yourself. Just keep expectations realistic: four weeks won’t make you a master, but they’ll move you off zero, and that’s often the very hurdle good intentions otherwise stumble over.

What remains from lockdown

Nobody misses the second lockdown. What does remain is an insight that would have been hard to grasp without it. A quiet stretch without a packed schedule isn’t a lost chapter; it’s space for exactly the things that always get pushed to the back burner in everyday life. Meaningful gifts, a routine that does you good, a skill you teach yourself. You don’t need a pandemic for that. A rainy weekend, a quiet week between years, or a deliberately cleared evening will do just as well.

More ideas for staying at home are in our first instalment, #stayathome: 4 activities to beat boredom, and if you’d rather take it easy, check out Wellness at Home. Serious about a fitness resolution? Our sister magazine InspiredBySports offers the perfect home-workout companion.