Staying Productive Through Sick Days and Setbacks

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Table of Contents

Podcast Description

Feeling under the weather or dealing with unexpected setbacks? It can be tough to stay productive while sick, but don’t worry, you’ve got this!

In this episode, I’m sharing simple, actionable productivity tips for sick days and how to push through work when you’re not feeling your best. You’ll learn how to stay productive during business setbacks and the importance of rest and recharge to come back stronger.

Tune in and discover how to keep your momentum going, no matter the challenge or curveball.

Links Referenced in Episode:

▶ FREE Maximize Your Week Reflection Debrief

▶ Productive Entrepreneurs Club

▶ Systems Savvy Society

▶ Taskflow Magic

Connect with me:

Website | Instagram

Episode Transcript

(Note: This is a formatted AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through, but is not an optimized blog post. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

Episode Intro

Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, your host of the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, where I’m on a mission to help online entrepreneurs that like you focus on all the right things and kiss overwhelmed goodbye. Here, you’re going to learn strategies that will boost your productivity so that you can scale your online biz and impact lives sooner. It’s your time to shine. So let’s get started.

Hey, hey! Welcome back to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast. This week has been a major roller coaster. I was ready to jump back into work. I sent an email to my email list last week, and I was like, “Yay! I finally have some breathing space, literally, and you just get ready to hear more from me.” And then life literally laughed in my face and was like, “Ha! Yeah, right!”

And me and my daughter, we both got a cold or flu. Anyways, my throat’s been hurting. She’s been having this nasty cough and mucus and it’s just been a week and I have been taking a lot of time to just rest and slow down. So sad. I haven’t even had coffee in the past two days, and that is one of my favorite ways to start my day but coffee irritates my throat.

So I’m just drinking water and tea and yeah, sad days. And for some reason I decided, you know what? I should record this on video again and go back to publishing on YouTube. So, here I am. If you haven’t seen me on the YouTube channel in a while, hey! Hello! I’m back. I will see how much I, how long I actually keep this up for. We’ll see.

How to Stay Productive While Sick and Setbacks Happen

And in case this is your first time tuning in to the show, hi! Hello, I’m Lucy Reyes. I’m a productivity strategist and I love helping entrepreneurs get time back in their days and especially through all of the chaos like I have been experiencing this week. And so something that I have, you know, have to come to grips to over and over and over again is the fact that we can feel really guilty as entrepreneurs or stress ourselves out whenever we can’t go a hundred percent.

Whenever we can’t go a hundred miles per hour and we’re so time strapped and we’re just so upset because we can’t get all the things done that we want to get done. Like, yeah, I’m there. I’ve been there. I’m there right now. You know, these unexpected setbacks. I was ready to go full speed ahead and that just was not the case for me this week, and I had to choose to prioritize myself.

Yet, I still was incredibly productive because there is a different way that I like to describe productivity, and it’s not this, you know, you have to overwork yourself. You have to hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. You have to create maximum output, like none of that. Okay? Rest is also productive. So yeah, it was productive. Okay?

But let’s get into some of the tactical stuff because even though I wasn’t feeling my best this week and even though I was still resting a lot this week, I still found pockets of time where I could write these two email newsletters that I sent to my email list. I ended up running a last minute flash sale on a whim just because I celebrated my hundredth episode on the podcast.

I was like, “Let’s celebrate. Let’s run a flash sale.” I haven’t done a little sale in like about two weeks or so let’s go ahead and do that. So I wrote up the emails and I sent them out, scheduled them out, and now I’m starting to get back on track with my launch for Taskflow Magic, which will be in a few weeks.

And you can be this way too. You can do this too.

Productivity Tips for Sick Days

Even through all of the setbacks, even through all of the chaos, even through sick days, even through whatever it is that you’re going through, you can have productive days with rest and still getting things done from your to-do list. So let’s go ahead and talk about some of the things that you can do to stay productive through sick days and through setbacks.

1. Use Your Time Wisely

So the first thing is to use your time wisely. Okay? Especially when you’re sick or you have something going on in your home or in your personal life or your job or whatever it is for you. Just find those small pockets of time where you can get something done, and don’t worry about working these long hours that maybe you might be used to doing, because that’s just how things are right now.

But whenever you are going through these situations, whenever you are going through these unexpected curve balls, really take a step back, really slow down and just use your time wisely and prioritize a lot of rest during that time. Okay? So I definitely worked shorter burst of time and they were a little bit more scattered throughout the day, but that’s fine.

That’s just how things needed to be this week because I did need to take a couple naps, which, sometimes I do anyways but I definitely had to force myself to be like, “No, no, no, no. Like my brain literally feels muggy right now. There’s no way I can get some productive work done.” Like, “I will be more productive after I take this 30-minute nap.”

And so that’s just how it was.

2. Prioritize Your Most Important Tasks

The second thing is to prioritize your most important task, especially on days when you’re not feeling a hundred percent. Focus on only those critical tasks that absolutely have to get done and know not everything on your list is urgent, okay? Not everything is urgent. So really take a look and say what absolutely needs to get done today or this week that something will actually, something bad may actually happen if it doesn’t get done.

And in some cases it might not even be that something bad will happen, but maybe it will really put you behind or whatever the case is, but really take a look and see what actually needs to be prioritized. For me this week, it was focusing on those email newsletters. That was the main thing because I had an email and I really wanted to send an email.

It’s not really completely urgent, but it was the most urgent thing on my list and so that’s what I prioritized. And then after that was done, I felt like I had a little bit more energy, and then that’s when I decided to run the flash sale. Now if you do want some support on figuring out your priorities and really reflecting back on the previous week to see how you can improve on your next week, I have a free resource called Maximize Your Week Reflection Debrief.

Go check out the link in the show notes because that is going to be your guide to really helping you see what you can improve on every single week, so that way you can maximize the time that you are working on your business. So go check that out in the link in the show notes. I am still a little stuffed up, so we’re gonna try to wrap this up now.

3. Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

The third one here is, don’t be so hard on yourself. Okay? It is so easy to be guilty and to feel like, “Oh my gosh!” Like, “I’m not good enough. How can I not do this? Why do I keep falling behind?” Like, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I not keep up with things the way that I normally keep up with them at?”

And yeah, like I’ve been there, you know, I’m the productivity person. I’m the one who goes full speed and gets a lot done. My coaches are always like, “Lucy…” Like, “Yeah, I know you can handle it. I know you can do it,” but I also have to slow down and I also cannot be so hard on myself, especially when there’s things that are just out of my control.

Something that I tell my son a lot, especially because he’s in sports, is you cannot control what happens to you. You cannot control what the refs say. You cannot control what your teammates do or the other team does. You can control how you react to it. You can decide that, “Oh, it’s gonna knock you down, or you’re going to use that as motivation to do better.”

And it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You cannot control all of these things that have happened. You can control how you react to them. And I really encourage you to react in a positive way, in a positive way, and just remember that even the small steps forward that you’re taking, even if they’re slow, they are still worth celebrating.

4. Rest and Recharge

Now, I’ve already mentioned this a lot, but I added it here as an actual bullet point, which is to rest and recharge. Taking care of your health is key. If you do not feel good enough to work, then don’t. Don’t push through. Don’t just try to get things done because very likely that increases the chances of you making a mistake.

It means that you’re probably not gonna be productive because your brain is a little foggy, so you might be at your desk. You might be typing, but you’re typing slow where you’re having to backspace. You’re like, “Wait…” Taking some time to like really think about what? What? Like, you’re just confused. And that’s because you’re not in the right state of mind.

And the best thing that you can do in those moments is go take a nap. Go rest. You will come back stronger, I promise. Those 30 minutes away from work is going to be so much better for you when you actually come back, rather than just pushing through those 30 minutes. Like whatever work you would’ve gotten done in those 30 minutes is actually like two hours worth of work because your brain is just not having it. So definitely rest and recharge and take care of yourself.

If you’re listening to this episode in real time, inside of the Productive Entrepreneurs Club, which is my $7 a month membership, this month’s theme is all about self-care, rest, relaxing, and simple little things that you can do in less than five to 10 minutes a day.

So self-care is something that you’re struggling with or is just a challenge for you, then I definitely invite you to join us and come join in on the weekly simple productivity challenges that I have for you to help make self-care a habit, an ongoing habit, that actually lasts and that’s actually sustainable no matter how busy your life is.

Okay, so that link is also in the show notes.

5. Rely on Your Systems

And lastly here, whew! The absolute most… Not most important ’cause these are all important, but my favorite one… No, not even my favorite one. These are all equally important and they’re all pretty much my favorite ones but this one is to rely on your systems.

I would say this is the one that makes everything else so much easier. That! Let’s go with that. This tip here is what’s going to make all the other tips that we’ve covered in today’s episode so much easier. Because when you have these systems in place, they are going to become your lifeline, okay?

Whenever things get busy, whenever things get chaotic, whenever things are difficult, whenever your mental energy or your emotional capacity is just not there, systems will act as your roadmap whenever these things happen, and they’re going to help you get all of the things that you need to get done, whether it’s urgent or not, done faster, more efficiently, better.

So, yeah, like systems are super important and my favorite type of systems that really help keep me on track with all of my tasks and projects are taskflows. These truly have been a game changer for my business, and it’s something that I’ve been teaching inside of the Taskflow Magic Course, which I mentioned it earlier.

I’ll be launching it later this month. So definitely get on my email list so you can learn more about that. But if you want to learn more about systems in general, then come join us inside of the Systems Savvy Society, which is my membership, all about helping you build these sustainable, simple systems that work for you, not against you.

Wrap-Up

If you want to learn how to build systems that work for you, check out the Systems Savvy Society. It’s all about creating sustainable systems to simplify your business. I’ll dive deeper into task flows in the next episode, so make sure to tune in!

To recap today’s episode, here are the five tips to stay productive through sick days and setbacks:

Use your time wisely
Prioritize your most important tasks
Don’t be so hard on yourself
Rest and recharge
Rely on your systems

If any of these resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you! Tag me on Instagram at @cheerstoproductivity or leave a comment below this episode. Let me know what you’re going to try next. See you in the next episode!

Thank you for listening to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast with me, Lucy Reyes. To view the full transcript and all the links mentioned in today’s episode, visit cheerstoproductivity.com/podcast. And before you go, make sure you follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening so that you’ll know when the next episode drops. Talk soon, and cheers to your productivity and success!