While the majority of European citizens have experienced periods of full lock-down during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Swedish strategy has emphasised individual responsibility by posing recommendations and restrictions rather than pure prohibitions upon its citizens. This study investigates how Swedish citizens navigated and made sense of everyday life during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, using empirical material in the form of eight narrative interviews. The analysis focuses on three of these narratives by emphasising the interviewees’ past experiences of risk, present understanding of COVID-19 in everyday life, and expectations for a post-COVID-19 future. From a biographical perspective, I argue that the interviewees made sense of the new behavioural guidelines that characterised everyday life during COVID-19 by applying the recommendations and restrictions provided by the government and authorities. Thus, these recommendations could be understood as biographical structures that temporarily re-structured the citizens’ everyday lives. Moreover, the analysis reveals some difficulties with ‘soft’ governance from a subjective perspective. While the interviewees supported the Swedish strategy and adjusted their everyday lives in accordance with its recommendations, they sometimes found it hard to transform them into practice. These difficulties in managing the ‘soft’ Swedish strategy emphasises the subjective side of being governed and thus makes an interesting contribution to critical studies on risk and uncertainty.