An Email About Unplanned Time Off
(Save This For The Next Time Your Dog Gets Into Your Secret Cadbury Stash)

I rolled out of bed Tuesday morning feeling like a human punching bag. I was so sore. You know that special brand of headache where you can hear the blood pumping through your brain? That’s about where I was at. My body said, “Not today, Tarzan! You’ll be staying right here.”

…to which I replied, “Appreciate the input, body! But we have work to do.”

And I did.

I was scheduled to deliver a 90-minute class at 10:30am, plus we were about to hit “start” on our Email Stars promo even though only 4 out of 10 emails were ready to go. We also had a $5K VIP day booked for Thursday that my whole team was scheduled to attend together. Plenty to do, and only four weeks left of the year to do it.

Being sick was simply not an option.

After teaching my class, I conceded to a twenty minute nap. Two hours later, I’d slept through our weekly team meeting and my body was making it very clear there would be no going back to work. A headache raged, my muscles ached, the drip drip drip of the laundry tap sounded like a drum beating right next to my head.

I ended up taking three unscheduled days off.

One of the gifts of entrepreneurship is being able to make your own schedule, including taking as much time off as you want (theoretically). Unlimited PTO, woo hoo! I’ve been planning a 3-week Christmas break since September, organizing our marketing and program delivery calendar to accommodate. I feel really lucky that I can do that.*

But three days on the couch under a mountain of blankets doing a marathon of borderline-unwatchable Christmas movies starring Vince Vaughan? NOT IN THE PLAN.

Unplanned time off can be really stressful when you own your own business. Lots of us would rather muscle through it than lower ourselves into the quicksand of overdue tasks and unfinished projects i.e. take an actual sick day. But sometimes you don’t get a choice.

You forgot today was a P.D. day. The dog is barfing all over the carpet and needs emergency vet care. The furnace decided to stop working on the same day the temperature dipped below zero. There’s a service outage in your neighbourhood and even the local cafes don’t have WIFI (Sweet Jesus! NOT THE WIFI!)

Fortunate business owners like me can fire off a dramatic text message to Sandra, who has never once in our ten-year relationship recommended that I ignore my body and prioritize a deadline instead. The opposite, actually. Sandra takes my time off even more seriously than I do.*

But a lot of my clients and customers are one-person operations. Maybe you are too. Here are a few reminders to you for the next time your dog eats the neighbour’s garbage and messes up your $1200 Keith Herring Ruggable.

All deadlines are just made up. So what if you missed Black Friday. Give your sale a new name and send it the following weekend. You made up the deadline, and you can make up a new one.

Your people need you to set an example. More leaders need to show what flexibility looks like—rescheduling when you need a sick day, changing a deadline that no longer makes sense. Show your people what it looks like to give yourself grace, and let them show you grace in return.

Ask for help. You don’t have a direct line to Sandra, I get that. But I bet you have someone who can help you think rationally about what’s on your calendar and how to buy yourself some space. Call that person. They want to help you.

Time away makes you a better performer. Pushing past your limit, fighting through creative slumps, ignoring your life falling apart around you? Leave that to Silicon Valley people. The rest of us perform much better when we’re rested and our lives are not in chaos. Tend what needs tending, and you end up net-positive when it comes to productivity.

Your brain is making stuff up. Getting through all those overdue tasks is not as big a deal as your brain is making you think. You aren’t drowning, you’re just a bit stressed right now because you can’t work. A day will come when you’re strong and capable, and you can easily knock out what you thought was three days' work in six hyper-productive hours. (See previous!)

Choose Hugh Grant. My biggest mistake last week was choosing a Christmas fairytale where Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughan go from being a cool couple who take dance lessons and travel around the world enjoying a fun, child-free lifestyle, to finally settling down and doing things the heteronormative way. Boring! If you find yourself couchbound on a Wednesday, YOU ALWAYS GO WITH HUGH GRANT!!

It’s hard to imagine it not being stressed about unplanned time off in our productivity-obsessed world. DayQuil uses the tagline “Power through your flu symptoms.” They also use lines like, “Moms don’t take sick days” and “Crush the day!” — Gross!! Get it together, Procter & Gamble! But this is the world we live in, and it’s hard to ignore the constant pressure to be a high performer, especially when you’re laid up on the couch in zero control of your faculties.

I invite you to lay on the couch anyway. Take that day. Sleep in. Get lost in a book. Make it a Hugh Grant marathon. You aren’t just taking a day off, you’re staging a revolution. You’re a goddamn resistance fighter, Reader!

You’re Luke Fucking Skywalker, and you should be proud of yourself.

Tarzan Kay Kalryzian [she/her] Did someone forward you this email? ​Subscribe here​. Follow me on ​LinkedIn​.

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*She did request a doctor’s note when I missed the weekly team meeting.

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