Let Yourself Be Sick

All across the northern hemisphere it seems to be cold and flu season, and this year appears to be an exceptionally bad one. When you wake up one day feeling lousy you’re going to be tempted to still go into work; the days of being a student and telling mom “I’m too sick to go to school” are long behind you. But you need to rethink that first impulse and ask yourself if you really need to be going in.

It’s natural to want to head into the office, or get onto Skype and run your remote work like you would any other day, or do whatever else it is you do on a regular basis. We hate falling behind and looking bad in front of others. We have clients who are not going to be sympathetic because we’re sick. We don’t want anyone to think they can get along without us. We don’t want to look like wimps.

But working when you’re sick incurs plenty of costs while realizing very few benefits. The costs are easy to see: you can make other people sick, and that’s not going to make them very happy with you. Even if you work from home, you delay your own recovery and make the illness last longer when you don’t give your body a chance to fight it. It’s better to have a couple days of downtime and get over it than to have a few days of mediocre work when you’re not at your best, and make yourself feel miserable longer.

What about the benefits you get by going into work? Well, if you feel like you’re indispensable and MUST be there, that actually may be a bad sign. If your team cannot take care of things without you being there, what does that say about you as a leader? It suggests you may be a micromanager who has not developed your team ery well, to the point where they fall apart when you aren’t there. That’s really not a good thing, so if you feel like you absolutely, positive have to be at work for things to get done, you may need to make some changes there.

Also, don’t think for a moment that you’re impressing anyone by crawling into the office and fighting through all the sneezing and coughing. No one else wants you there, and rather than thinking ‘Wow, so tough!” they are more likely to be thinking “Wow, go home!” You’re not impressing them, you’re just making them concerned about their own health.

So when you feel like you’re coughing up a lung and you could fry an egg on your forehead, stay home and rest. You’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favors by going to work.