Testing

9 ways to enjoyably spend your lazy time with POTS, ME/CFS and/or long COVID

Pacing, rest and recovery are the right things to do and the most boring. Nine low-effort ways I fill the sofa hours without making myself worse: chess, podcasts, gentle games, and a bit of recumbent cycling.

If, like me, you have a post-viral chronic illness, then you’ll be familiar with a few particular words that are an absolute bore:

  • pacing
  • rest
  • recovery

They’re the right things to do medically, but they’re as boring as can be. I miss the time when I didn’t have to do them.

Even doing all of this, I’m still permanently tired, I permanently have a headache, and I episodically find myself short of breath. So I spend a lot of time lazing about on the sofa. I try to spend some of that productively, but inevitably a lot of it is spent on my phone.

Below are nine ways in which I either spend that time productively without tiring myself out, or, if not productively, then at least enjoyably.

1. Chess

I play chess! I bloody love chess, but especially now that I’m knackered. I play on my phone against friends and strangers. It’s an easy way to spend the time, it gets my brain going a bit, and I’m hoping that once (if) I get a bit more energy back, I’ll occasionally go to a local social chess meet-up in person.

2. The Elis and John podcast

I love comedy vehicles that provide the right environment in which funny people can just be funny. Elis James and John Robins is such a lovely environment for these two very funny people (plus Producer Dave). They record around two hours a week of very easy-listening conversation, a few games and a few jolly moments. It’s freely available on BBC Sounds without adverts, or anywhere else you get podcasts with advertising.

3. Fun and simple football manager games

I love football manager games, but I don’t love the intense ones that need a laptop and hours of your undivided attention. Two games fix that with a nicely drop-in, drop-out play style on your mobile phone:

Both are free to play with no account needed.

4. TimeGuessr

The new Wordle. It’s a really fun game: TimeGuessr shows you five photographs each day, taken at some point in history, and you need to work out when and where they were taken. Simple, really.

5. Gentle language learning

This may be challenging for some people, but I try to spend 5–10 minutes each day doing some language learning. I really like Language Transfer, which takes the language rules you already know from English and transfers the applicable ones to another language (in my case, Spanish). It’s free and really enjoyable, and much better, in my opinion, than Duolingo.

6. Reading

Not much else needed here. I try to read something lighthearted, whether a gentle crime mystery or a non-fiction book about something I care about.

7. Recumbent bike exercise

This one is specifically for the POTS people, but it may be useful for others. If you can, recumbent cycling, rowing or swimming is a brilliant option. Upright exercise is the thing POTS makes hardest, because it unreasonably elevates your heart rate, so training starts in positions where gravity isn’t fighting you, and upright modes such as walking arrive only in the later months.

Check out my review of the Levine and CHOP exercise protocols, or my own adaptations of them: the exercise readiness screen and the exercise progression tool. I’ve also written about how I use a recumbent bike at home.

8. Watch Taskmaster

Like Elis and John, I love vehicles that give funny people the opportunity to be funny. Taskmaster now has 20-plus series of being joyously lovely and entertaining, bringing the best out of a wide variety of comics.

9. Watch Last One Laughing

See 2 and 8. LOL: Last One Laughing UK rounds out the trio. These three things have given me a lot of amusement in what has otherwise been a really difficult physical, mental and emotional time.