COVID-19 anxiety's impact to my output: any strategies for mitigation? In the COVID-19 pandemic I am dealing with anxiety for the first time, and professionally floundering.
I'm usually good at prioritization, but the state of the world means emergencies, and anxiety magnifies the perception that I am the only person who can deal with them. Sometimes I am: I have high-risk family, have lost care for them, and my university is not making safety-centered decisions very well. I am joined by other new-anxious in not being able to buy safe help: parents of young children, colleagues with disabilities, and anyone who has family sick with COVID, many of whom are wondering where precisely the buck stops, except with themselves... My normal support circles are broken or only available over Zoom, which is less helpful than in-person access. Sleep, for many reasons, is now hard for me, yet vital zoom meetings happen at every hour. Compounding this, large projects I committed to in January are now much more difficult to finish, and past due.
Deadlines are deadlines, students get helped or they don't, grants forgone today add uncertainty to an already complex tomorrow. The law provides protections, but won't help with tenure cases, or provide funds to keep students fed. My field and academe in general are trending more competitive, not less. I am usually quite productive, publishing multiple papers a year, writing grants, etc. I am doing the 'right things': I exercise daily, have a therapist, am exploring meds, and have taken up meditation. I am lucky to be in the hands of good care, but that care is often stymied by the culture of academe. &quot;No one you can delegate that to?&quot; asks my therapist.
It does not help that those above me in the chain of command are largely uncomfortable with the idea of mental health, full stop. Advice to 'pull together, 'buck up', and 'chill out' has come, along with signaling that mental health is outside the preview of academe. This is even as they show their own symptoms of great stress. While industry settings often have clear ways to handle mental health situations, my institution has no such resources for faculty and staff. Academic settings also have less 'chain of authority' to directly assist individuals. &quot;Talk to your boss&quot; is not necessarily sound advice. 'HR' is not a useful resource either.
I am specifically looking for academe-focused strategies to cope and potentially even better succeed, with this anxiety. I am Jr. Faculty in one role, Staff in another, highly autonomous in both, at the same institution. Most of my commitments are to individuals outside of my department. I do not see this all 'ending' soon.
Those with anxiety pre-pandemic: do you have strategies I might try? How does one prioritize and strategize when everything is on fire? Can anxiety in fact be a superpower when applied correctly in academe?
Everyone: are there there things I should do to minimize impact on my academic career? I need to stay competitive with individuals who are younger and have less complexity than I do, as we will be evaluated equally.
I expect research output overall to be down this year into next. Surely some people will cope better than others, and different types of research are more or less directly impacted (e.g., that requiring solo work at a computer, versus that requiring access to shared facilities that may be/have been closed, versus that requiring face-to-face contact with human subjects). Others will have additional direct challenges to their time: childcare may be closed and children may be learning from home rather than school, for example.
@paulgarrett's comment is exactly what I was thinking of as an answer:

A small point: forgive yourself (as opposed to judging...) in this situation. It is crazy. To accidentally pretend that things are not crazy will obvs make you more crazy. My advice would be &quot;cope with the bad current state, and wait to think about things later...&quot;

...except I think this is the main point rather than a small one.
Besides that, it sounds like you're trying all the right things (eh, maybe not the booze, but if it does help you relax and if it's in moderation and not purely as medication then there's little harm).
I think the most &quot;solvable&quot; problem you have (or, at least, one I can provide some advice on) is this part:

Compounding all this, I accepted several large projects in January which are now past due. (...) Writing, especially, is very difficult, which puts me further behind, which leads to more anxiety.

You're probably best off doing some prioritization (from @avid's comment: &quot;What actually needs to be done by when? Can projects be reorganised to be more achievable? Can deadlines/deliverables be re-negotiated? Try and focus on completing one task/project at a time&quot;) and scheduling. There is no way you can make up for weeks of reduced productivity in an instant. Instead of worrying about everything you need to do (a circumstance I find myself in often; not new to COVID for me), set an immediate-term schedule for yourself.
The granularity might be something you experiment with, but try to set specific, achieveable goals for the next week, the next day, or the next hour. Do your best to meet them, but don't beat yourself up if you don't. Reevaluate your progress the next time you set goals. Try to focus on what you've accomplished.
It may be helpful to tier your short-term goals into:

Things you will accomplish (today/this week) no matter what (except emergency, of course)

Things you reasonably expect to accomplish

Goals to aim for in an ideal world


Probably the things you slot into &quot;3&quot; might look like a normal week for you pre-pandemic, or even far less than normal, and that's fine. Focus on making bits of progress on your projects that you can feel good about. Be prepared to have days and weeks where you only accomplish the tasks under (1), then forgive yourself for not doing more, remind yourself you've at least achieved your personal minimum, and move on.
In closing, though, and echoing Paul: forgive yourself, you're under a lot of very understandable stress in a crazy time.