This is a guest post by Corinne Ledling, a Content Manager at BIZSTATS, who loves to share tips and tricks about productivity and efficiency.
When you’re sick, you might feel like just curling up in a ball and forgetting everything for a while.
But there are ways to continue to be productive. If you are self-employed or need to keep up with work or study, this can be very important.
Sick Day Productivity
Here are 5 ways to be productive when you are sick.
- Use a timer. Rather than working all day, set a timer to short intervals of 10 or 20 minutes. Work on what you need to for that time, and then when the timer goes off, take a break for the same amount of time. Work in 10 or 20-minute intervals will help you to stay focused for short periods of time without needing to power through when your concentration lapses.
- Make a list. When you are sick, it can be harder to focus and to keep your short-term memory working well. In order to get through what you need to, try making a list of what needs to be done. If you are really struggling to be productive, break the list up further into the individual steps for each task. Breaking up tasks like this means you don’t need to be able to concentrate as much, because you can just move on to the next item of the list.
- Drop unimportant tasks. If you have some tasks on your to-do list which can probably wait, leave them for now and work on the important tasks instead. This will help to ensure that you can get through what needs to be done and worry about the rest later.
- Delegate your work. When you are sick, you aren’t going to be as productive as you are when you are feeling great. That’s just a fact of life, but it doesn’t mean that your to-do list has to remain unfinished. Instead, see if there is anyone you can delegate parts of your work to so you don’t return to work to find a huge pile of things that need doing.
- Keep yourself comfortable. Being sick means you need a lot of comfort. Made yourself as comfortable as possible, so you will feel a lot better about getting on with some of your tasks. This is also likely to help you recover better from your illness, which means you will be feeling better and able to be more productive a lot sooner.
Get Well Soon
The most important thing when you are sick is to take care of yourself.
Everyone gets sick now and then, and recovery should be your first priority.
However, with minor injury and illness productivity can still happen. Being sick doesn’t mean you have to lose time on important tasks.
Question: Are you productive on your sick days? What tips would you add to the list? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
It made sense to me when you said that you will need a lot of comforts when you are sick, so you must make yourself comfortable about getting on with some tasks. This reminded me of myself because I easily catch colds and flu even while at work, and I always end up working on fewer activities and tasks. With this in mind, I could imagine how important it is for workplaces to have access to medical onsite support services in order to provide immediate care and assistance to those who don’t feel well.