I think that this "Pandemic life" has really changed things up for all of us. For better or for worse, things aren't the same as they used to be. Some of the 'not-so-good' aspects of this are remote learning and having to spend most hours of the day in front of a screen. Because of that, I decided that I would try to minimize my time on the screen over the weekends so that I can have at least a full day of just "breathing" and spending quality time with my parents. That's why I decided to always try and work on my assignments over the week and if I have any assignments due over the weekend I'll try and have them done before Friday or Saturday at the latest in order to have Sundays all for me and my parents. I make sure that on Sundays I don't grab my computer and I put it away for that they. I also try to not use my phone as much to be somewhat away from screens.
Although this has been working for me, I have also tried to take some time for myself during the day. I have been taking at least 15 minutes a day where I just sit down on the couch or lay on my bed, put some music on, and just relax. I usually do this when I've been working for a few hours and I just feel like if I keep going I'll get a headache. This has really helped my levels of stress go somewhat down compared to how I used to be before.
All of this has had me thinking about our students and how they cope with all the stress of remote learning or how they will deal with all of the stress of transitioning back to in-person school. I thought about having just 5 minutes in the middle of class where students get to take out their phone, listen to music and then get back to class but I don't think this will be productive because other than schools having really strict phone policies in the classroom, bringing the students attention back to class will be hard. So I put that idea aside and then thought of games and fun 5-minute activities (or 10-minute activities for block schedules) that somehow involved math yet it was totally outside of the topic of that day so that the students had time to just enjoy and not have to think of school work (at least not directly). Some of the ideas that I thought of small games were bingo, Kahoot, etc, or some ice breaker games where I could through in one or two math questions either about previous things learned in class or just a general numbers question.
I still need lots of things to think about and how I could make this work in the classroom but I definitely believe that having at least 5 minutes to take our mind away from all the stress of school, work, home, etc is necessary to keep out mental sanity.