Random Thoughts After a Week of Sickness
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About a week ago, on Thursday night, my wife got struck by a high fever. 39 degrees Celsius (102,2 degrees Fahrenheit). She couldn’t get up from bed, so I had to stay home and take care of her and our baby boy. She was sick for the whole week-end, and when she started to get better on Sunday, Oiva was next. 40,2 degrees Celsius (104,4 Fahrenheit). And finally on Monday evening my resistance broke and I found myself trembling in bed (a bit over 39).
Why am I telling all of this to you?
For two reasons: First, it’s a great excuse for not having written anything to my blog in some days. Second, this sickness episode reminded me of some pretty interesting lessons in life, business and everything that I wanted to share with you today.
Lesson 1: Don’t get sick
Being sick means that you can’t get your work done.
You might be optimistic and think that with the help of a few pills and a few cups of self-discipline you will be able to write those hundred lines of HTML, or twenty pages of clever copy writing for a customer of yours. But at the end of the day you’ll notice that all you managed to do was to sleep and moan in your bed.
So, if you are in a business and have people rely on you being there, you better not get sick.
Lesson 2: If you get sick, you’d better prepare for it
Sickness comes unannounced. So when you are sick there is nothing you can do about it. You can try, of course. But usually you won’t get better unless you stay in bed and get some rest.
But that doesn’t mean there would be nothing you can do about it.
What you can do is to prepare for it in advance. It’s called risk management, and it is something pretty cool — and important.
The risk in this case is that you getting sick will make you lose money. And the ways you can prepare for it are many:
- Make your money sources independent of your work. Many people commented on my post about making your business to be about you saying that you shouldn’t make your business rely on you. They said that you have to have a backup so that if you are suffering from a cold, someone else can do your work. Or even better, if you can make your income sources passive, it’s completely OK for you to stay at home until you get better and are able to work again.
- Be open about it. When you are down with the flu, let your boss, customers or co-workers know about the situation. They will most likely be OK about it. After all, everyone is sick from time to time.
- Start early. By starting to work on your deadlines early enough, you build some buffer for yourself. When the work is almost done a week or two before the deadline, if you happen to catch a cold, you’ll still be able to finish the project when you are back from the death. On the contrary, if you drop to bed a few days before a deadline that you haven’t even started to work towards, that’s not a good thing at all.
Lesson 3. When your kid gets sick, you really want to work from home
One of the things that make working for someone else tricky is that you always need to get your boss’s approval for how you use your time. I’m in the lucky position that I work for a rather relaxed company (we make games, so maybe that has something to do with it). But still I can’t just say “hey boss, I’m staying at home this week to take care of my son who has a cold and isn’t doing so well…”
So while this sickness episode showed me one reason why working for someone else is easier (someone at work will do your job if you are sick and can’t make it), it also gave me an important reason for staying at home and working for yourself (you don’t have to beg for permission to stay at home and take care of your family).
It also taught me that it’s frustrating and stressful to see your baby suffer. You see that he’s in pain, but all you can do is to give some medication and try to get him to sleep.
Luckily now everyone is doing much better, and we’re slowly returning back to normal.
What about you? What kind of lessons have you learned about sickness and health lately? How do you make sure your work gets done even if you can’t be there to do it? Or do you have some tricks to make sure you don’t get sick?
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December 13th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Jarkko - we missed you. Hopefully you are feeling a bit better. Sick baby != feeling of peaceful calm.
Ok you bring up two important points - the clear one is contingencies. The other interesting one is the seperation of work and life. People get sick, other people die .. you name it. I had a friend who owned a large business who told me that within his organization on any one day, there is usually a death in the family, sickness, personal injury or tragedy as well as birthdays, births, and weddings. He said that business and life are never truly as separated as people try to make them. Makes me wonder if perhaps we should not hold them at such odds?
I’ll think more on contingencies on my walk.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Jarkko, i feel for you man. i joke a lot about giving away the family (especially the boy, he’ll be the death of me), but nothing is more heartbreaking then my little man with a fever puking all over the place and crying.
the last time anthony was sick my wife was too. i called into work (the shitty job i was eventually fired from) and let them know that i was going to stay home to take care of my family. i hate missing work, especially if i’m not sick. my former employer made me feel guilty for caring for my family.
great comment shane. now that i am working from home it feels that i am working all the time, even if i’m just spending time with the fam.
get well, PEACE!
December 13th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Glad you’re starting to feel better Jarkko! Being sick is no fun at all.
I don’t know if I’d classify these as “tricks” or not, but usually (knock on wood) I will only get sick about once per year. Seems around the start of winter I come down with a cold for about a week. Other than that, I’m usually fine. Whether it helps or not, I credit my lack of sickness to drinking lots of tomato juice (I love that stuff) and exercising three to four days a week (it’s suppose to keep your immune system up).
Anyway, glad you’re back.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Thanks guys! It feels good to be missed.
I’m feeling decent already, and so is the rest of my family - although Mari just lost her voice almost completely…
That’s life. :)
@Shane: “Sick baby != feeling of peaceful calm” is 100% true.
It was weird when on Monday evening (I think it was Monday) we realized that Oiva was sleeping silently in his bed and not crying. After a few days of not enough sleep and lots of crying and weeping, it felt like heaven.
About work/life balance, I’m with you. I think the distinction we make between the two is somewhat arbitrary and only serves the purpose of making people easier to manage (not a bad purpose, of course, but not a really good one either).
A perfect human life is a perfect mix of all the ingredients that matter to us: some meaningful work, some family, some friends, so time for yourself, some good books, and so on. And especially with kids things rarely happen in the order you plan them to happen.
I’m afraid that my son will take his first step when I’m not here to see it, or say his first real word just when it’s time to be at work. I wonder if work and the rest of our lives could mix so that there is room for breaks for things like this in the work day and then again room for some hard work when that’s needed…
@Michael: Thanks for the support! Your former employer sounds like a pretty lousy one so it sounds like a good thing that you’re now working at home and can care about your family when you want to.
@Deron: Good tricks! I have never really tasted tomato juice so that’s something I should definitely try. And excercising - that sure makes sense too.
Nice to be back, although it’s taking a while to get up to date on what has happened during these few days. At least Shane’s interview thread has grown to something amazing (this morning when I went to read the comments, there was 74 of them - which is too much for me to handle in just a few minutes ;)
December 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I think you also make a great but subtly stated point: Communicate. If your productivity is about to drop off the deep end, it helps to let your clients know so they don’t get their panties in a knot about it.
Hope you’re feeling better Jarkko.
-p
December 14th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I’m very ill now… I’ll have to go to the hospital tomorrow if I won’t get better by then.
I have no idea where I caught this illness from, but I did attend a business event on Tuesday and that had the usual bad combination of handshakes followed by food. Why is such unhealthy combo so common and what can we do to change it?
December 15th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Inspired by your post I scheduled some time to make “backup plans” for our company. Thanks.