Condition management while running a business.

One of the challenges of running a small business when you have health conditions that leave you with limited energy is finding the balance between developing the business, and managing your health. 

Taking sick leave means not earning and not developing the business - but not taking leave means struggling on with worsening health - which can in turn mean reducing energy further - creating a vicious circle of decreasing functioning.

There is no 'right answer', no magic solution that will make it all easy, and I am very much still learning.

Today I sat down with my colleague and discussed where the business is at, the demands on my time/energy, and what resources I realistically have (health, energy, time where I'm functioning well enough to work). When everything going on in my life (work, volunteering, family, health) is taken into account, right now, in energy terms: demand exceeds supply.

This doesn't mean I have to stop everything, but it does mean I need to make changes for my business to be sustainable. 

One thing that uses a significant amount of my resources at the moment (non-business) will change in the new year, with a significant reduction in demand in January, that will taper off further over the following few months. This will make my standard business demands sustainable - but January is a long time away in terms of pacing. So until this kicks in, I need to reduce the demands on my energy in other ways.

Continuing the routine business tasks is manageable until the new year too. As is going to the OT show (with scheduled crash-space afterwards, which is, of course, a standard part of event planning for me). But not much more.

So I've decided to pause developing new products and reviewing existing ones until the new year. This means that a few products may temporarily run out of stock. But don't panic - we'll be restocking our shelves with new and improved products in the new year.

This isn't a step backwards - it is a good route to many future steps forward.

So while I'm hoping no business coaches read this and decide I need to be lectured on 'setting high goals and pushing to achieve them' (which I've heard too many times before, and is an unrealistic and destructive approach in my circumstances) I thought I'd risk it just to let you all know what's going on. Because I think 'my people' - the community of people with all sorts of disabilities and health conditions of which I have become a part - will want to know, and will understand.