If you have worked in corporate America at all, you’ve likely heard a lot about achieving work life balance. Some tactics shared are helpful. Some are too shallow to really do anything for those of us who live with chronic illness. With the extra difficulties of chronic illness, we have to take a step back and look at this with a fresh perspective. Here are some of my tips on how to evaluate your life to achieve a better balance.
Find Your Limits
I know I bring up this point a lot, but it is truly foundational to building a life you love when you live with a chronic illness. By understanding your limits, you can make more informed decisions about how you use your time, energy, and money. Recently on social media I’ve been seeing posts about how the average healthy working adult has 10 good hours in a day. When you look at your own limits, how many good hours do you have? Many of the people I saw on social media talking about this say they have about 4 good hours. I have found for myself that I’m closer to 6 good hours and can squeeze out a bit more with a 2+ hour nap. By understanding your limits, you can plan out your day to work to your strengths.
Chunking
In the ADHD community, we talk about chunking a lot, especially when a task is daunting. This is helpful for anyone with a chronic illness. When you break down a task for its smaller, more actionable parts, you understand what exactly the task entails. When you do this, you can split it up in a way that makes more sense to you. By breaking it down, you can also delegate parts of tasks to people who may be more suited to them.
Delegate
No one person can do it all. This is more true for those of us with chronic illness. While we usually hear the term delegate in a work context in corporate America, we can use this in our own personal lives. I delegate cleaning my bathroom to my teenager, who does it with grumbles for some chore money added to her allowance. Whether it’s giving chores to someone who has more good hours or is more suited to it or it’s letting certain work, tasks go to other people, when you control delegation, you become able to let go of tasks that drain you that you specifically don’t have to do in a way where everyone wins.
Accommodate
This word is probably very familiar to most of us. We talk about work accommodations, but how often do we talk about accommodations we give ourselves? I have many accommodations in place for myself to do what I do. When I go to any place, I will need to stand in a line, I will bring a cane. I get tremors when on my feet for too long and standing in one spot makes it worse. I bring the cane so that if I have to wait long enough for the tremors to pop up; I have something to help me keep my balance and make the tremors a minor annoyance. Using a mobility aid to help you get through your day is up to you. The purpose of mobility aids is to open up the world to you. Use them as you see fit to broaden your perspective.
Another factor we often overlook about accommodations, though, is that they aren’t always big things. Jessica McCabe of How To ADHD has talked on her channel about how one accommodation she had at a server job in her past was a stapler. It was a simple accommodation that most people wouldn’t think about but could also benefit from. If a minor change can accommodate your needs better, try to implement it and it may dramatically improve what you can do.
Learn To Say No With Confidence
I know that a lot of chronically ill people are women. As a woman, society taught me to be pleasant, be aware of the surrounding needs, and go with the flow. I could not say no while growing up. It’s something I still work on as an adult with a kid. But learning to say no with confidence helps you not take on the extra things that will drain or deplete you. You are the person who will deal directly with the consequences of saying yes to something you know you should have said no to. It’s okay to say no too many of the things others ask of you. Be willing to say no to the unimportant things you feel pressured into. It will allow for more space to find the balance you want.
Those were my tips to better find work life balance with a chronic illness. Do you have any ideas I didn’t mention? Leave them in the comments below.
