When you’re sick, rest.
This is advice to myself… I’ve been trying to shake off a cold for the last 2 weeks. Still I’m feeling crap. I’m horribly unproductive, and this is going on for far much longer than required.
The simple answer — I haven’t been resting. I still work, and I’ve still run multiple workshops in different cities with important clients. And here I am, 2 weeks later, still feeling like crap, and failing at home, and now work too. Today was another day of phone calls between intermittent sleeps trying to recover. Then in the evening when I’m on dad duty (a job 10x more draining than work), I’m failing there too…
When you’re sick, rest. Rest fully — delegate, take email off your phone, turn it off, set your out of office on, and sleep. Without your health the wheels falls off of everything.
It’s not simple to call in sick, and very human to avoid doing it. In my case it would’ve meant postponing the start of a project, one that people had flown in for… But still, it’s important, and stupid not to.
If you’re in leadership and you recognise someone is sick, encourage them to take the day off, offer yourself as point of contact, and tell them not to worry, your health is more important. The reasons why we don’t call in sick are well documented.
And you know what? People don’t miss you as much as you think. (now I need to take my own advice)
