Being Productive on Disability
Our society values productivity over almost everything. People don’t even have hobbies anymore: they have side hustles and the requisite burnout. Everything is an opportunity to be productive and make money. While participating in the rat race can make you feel really good, the money-motivated mindset can be damaging for people struggling with chronic health problems or disabilities.
It’s not enough that you may often physically feel bad, your inability to work a 10-hour day and then go home and drive an Uber or run your e-commerce store can leave you feeling inadequate in general.
Being productive doesn’t need to mean adding hours of work to your day. If you need to take each day as it comes to cope with your illness or injury, it’s better to focus on making the most of the time that you feel good and channeling your energy into something that’s meaningful to you.
Do you find that all those productivity tips ring hollow for you? Consider these tips for living well on disability.
Change Your Definition of ‘Productivity’
In a world that seems to reward working until you reach burnout, it’s hard to understand productivity as anything less than working flat out — to always be pushing, always be reaching. The federal government’s strict definition of disability doesn’t help matters; not meeting government guidelines doesn’t mean you’re not capable of running the rat race. Instead, changing the way you see planning and goal setting is important because you don’t live in a world where you can expect 110% from your body. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Learning to cope with a disability or chronic illness means accepting that you need to find your new ‘normal’ and begin to see what works for you. Whether that means working on a project for half an hour or 2 hours or 8 hours, your productivity needs to tailor to your health first. You can’t compare yourself to others.
What’s more, for many of us, coping with changes brought on by illness or injury means beginning to understand that we can do meaningful work outside of the traditional ‘work’ setting. Caring for yourself is productivity. Creating a health goal like going to pilates and sticking to it, taking a nap to restore your energy, or planning healthy recipes is productivity. Using your time to serve others is productivity. Creating, making, and being kind in any capacity are fantastic uses of your time. Not earning a paycheck for them doesn’t invalidate their power or diminish their value.
Use a Planner for Your Projects
Wrapping your mind around a new definition of productivity is an important first step to feeling and being more effective in what you do. From here, you need to arm yourself with the right tools. Productivity tools are your friends whether you’re a busy project manager at a Fortune 500 or you’re working on personal projects. These tools can help you identify all the things you want to do using a simple interface and give you the joy of being able to tick the ‘done’ box on them.
Using planning and productivity tools help you organize your day can be a huge help if you struggle with things like brain fog. When you log in, you’ll see all the available tasks that you have in order and easily sorted into groups. You can look at your list, make sense of it, and get to work. These tools also allow you to collaborate with others as necessary. Perhaps the best part is that you can break down all your big tasks into micro-tasks that you can do in a day.
When you use programs like Asana, ToDoist, and the Passion Planner, you will likely see that you are far more productive than you initially thought.
Make Self-Care a Priority
Caring for yourself should always be a priority no matter where you are in life. Getting enough rest, learning what it takes to recharge mentally, and taking steps to make sure you live in a healthy environment are important for every one of us.
Self-care is always a fine balance, but you may find your needs change if you become disabled or you are now facing a chronic disease. Each person’s disability or disease is unique, and your experience of it will be equally so.
That’s why it’s so important not to put self-care off to a point where you have ‘time,’ but to make time for it. If the changes in your body are new to you, make sure you include asking for help in your self-care plan. In addition to asking for help from those around you, you may find it helpful to seek out a therapist who can help you learn to cope in a healthy (and productive) way.
Productivity is a Perspective
In a world that’s status and title obsessed, it can be hard to look at it and know you don’t have the option of working as hard or as much as the obsessive types you see around you. But that’s not a bad thing. You can absolutely be productive with a disability or chronic illness, but you will need to reevaluate your definition of the subject.
Productivity is possible because you are perfectly capable of doing things of value — even on days where it’s hard to get out of bed.
Instead of letting the world set the standard for you, you can take charge and thrive by doing things that are important to you and the people around you. If you take a look around, you’ll see very quickly that you are making a difference.
