So, here we have been for a month!  I know that not all of you have been working from home for a full month, but we are getting close to that one month mark.  And, I know that some of you are really struggling to try to figure this out, or juggle all of the new demands on your time.  But I just wanted to put some perspective on this all…cause I miss my colleagues!

You see my position with Extension is not to babysit, but rather to provide quality educational resources to youth.  And, secondary to that, to provide that quality education in a safe environment.  My mission with Extension has not changed, despite all of the curve balls that COVID has thrown my direction.  YEAH, it has been a major inconvenience to say the least…but that inconvenience has been uniform across everyone’s plate…not just those of us in Extension.

I think that like never before we have some opportunities here….our most major opportunity is to show everyone in the state how responsive we can be in new situations!  That we can be real agents for change!  We have tools at our finger tips that quite frankly work well in our mission and also quite frankly, we have access to tools that other businesses may not have in their arsenal.  Sure, the copier and postage scale may be in quarantine, and you may have spent a lot of time trying to figure out a work around for mail and your work phone….but by now, I’m hoping that your new normal is becoming easier for you…that you have figured out how the tools we have at our disposal work well in this new environment.  And, that you have been able to adapt and have finally got back to our mission of providing quality educational experiences for Nebraskans during an age of COVID-19!

So here are my top five tips for Programming in the Age of COVID-19:

1. Create a routine and follow it!  Get up at the same time and go to bed at the same time.
2. Get your sleep.  Don’t binge watch some old t.v. show that you have seen eight times already….go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.  ..Okay, I admit, I binge watched Tiger King on Netflix last weekend.  Nothing spectacular came out of my time commitment, but it did help me connect some dots with why I saw some tiger cubs in the Platte River Mall in North Platte years ago!  🙂
3. Eat healthy.  Yeah, I know, I don’t necessarily trust the grocery pickup to pick out the freshest fruits and vegetables….but I do want to eat healthy, so I am working on building that trust.
4. Get some exercise. Not all of you have the luxury of living in a rural area where you can literally take a walk every night and still social distance….but if you do, do it!  You will feel so much better!
5. Think innovatively.  I love it when I can jump in my car and it just works…but well, if you have driven very long, you know that there is going to be a day when you jump in the car, and something is wrong…dead battery, flat tire, something.  Do you shrivel into a ball crying when that happens or do you figure it out?  Well, it’s time to figure this out too!  Not everything is going to happen perfectly, but moving incrementally forward is at least moving forward!  If we shrivel in defeat…we are only moving ourselves and our organization backwards!