Is your cube mate sneezing and hacking away?  Are you yourself run down and sick?  If you’re a Type A worker, you’re probably soldiering through a cold and feel like it’s the right thing to do.  You’re 100 percent wrong.  Here’s why…

A few days ago I wrote a post called: Prescription for When You’re Not Yourself

In it I wrote about the importance of recharging and getting much-needed rest when you’re feeling run down.  I even talked about taking sick days.  I said:

“If you’re not fully engaged and feeling like you’re being productive or you find it harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning for too many days in a row, it might be time for a personal day.  Don’t get personal days?  Call in sick.  Do anything to step away from your day job and inject a little TLC into your life…stat!”

Playing Hero – Avoiding Sick Days
When you don’t take your vacation, on top of not taking a sick day, your body is run down - so is your mind.  You’re not at your optimal self and that means you’re not delivering the BEST WORK that you know you can.  You might try to fool yourself into thinking that operating at 80 percent and being at work is better than nothing, but you’re wrong.

If you continue to operate at ‘red line’ by working when you’re sick and not feeling great, you’ll either crash and burn and be forced to take a sick day or you’ll continue to deteriorate.  Your 80 percent quickly becomes 50 percent capacity.

If you instead take the day to rest fully by unplugging from your computer, getting a lot of sleep and rest, you’ll be back to 100 percent in no time.

Compare the amount of work you get done after a day’s rest versus operating at 50 percent and you’ll quickly come to appreciate the power of taking a sick day when you need it.  By the way, that’s why your company gives you sick days, so you can take them.  Your company will thank you for now spreading germs and just as important, so will your coworkers.

In other words, stop playing HERO because you’re doing a poor, poor job at it if you were to objectively look at your output.  Stay home, rest up and come in the next day ready to kick butt.

One last thought that ties back to the original intent of my post – Prescription for When You’re Not Yourself

I came across this wonderful article on the topic of taking personal days.  Here’s an excerpt that hits home on this idea of how important taking days off is – whether it’s a personal day or a sick day:

“Perhaps you find taking ‘me time’ difficult because you feel guilty or believe it’s selfish. We tend to view taking care of ourselves as a luxury, even somehow morally wrong.  In fact, taking time for yourself is anything but selfish. Nursing is tough, demanding work. If you don’t take time to rejuvenate, eventually you won’t have much self left. And you can’t give what you don’t have.

When you take care of yourself you become happier, calmer, and more generous. Far from affecting your job performance negatively, ‘me time’ makes you faster, more productive, and more efficient.

Personal time is also important because it reminds you that you’re not your work. If you dash ceaselessly from one task to the next without doing anything you personally enjoy, life ceases to be rewarding and becomes a dreary struggle. Shift your focus to something totally different, if only for a very short time, and you’ll renew your energy and focus.

So how do you press that ‘off’ button? It doesn’t have to happen at someone else’s expense. Plan carefully and schedule an entire day or evening just for you. Tell everyone you’re unavailable. Even brief breaks, 15 minutes or so, are worthwhile if you do something that brings you joy. It’s not how much time you take for yourself, but how frequently and consistently you take that time.”