Your watch isn’t broken. Wednesday came and went without the regular Best Practices post. Normally I’ll think about ideas during the week, but not start writing the post until Tuesday or Wednesday. In most cases, there’s no problem with that system. Which brings me to the topic of this post: unplanned diminished capacity.

Any freelancer has probably already considered what would happen if they had a truly debilitating illness or injury. (You may not have a good plan to deal with it, but you’ve at least considered what it would do to your business.) You can buy both short-term and long-term insurance to help in situations where you can’t work at all, but what about situations where you can work, just at a reduced capacity.

Case in point, I sprained my ankle last week. (Here’s the aftermath over a week later. No image manipulation was used.) I am still able to work, but I don’t get anywhere near as much done each day. My home office is up a staircase. If I want to have lunch, get a drink, go to the bathroom, check the mail, or any of a hundred other tasks that usually take less than a minute, I have to maneuver slowly up and down the stairs. I need to keep weight off my foot, which involves changing the normal way I sit at my desk. I’m constantly fighting the urge to revert to my normal seated position, which puts uncomfortable pressure on my ankle.

I’m basically talking about a laundry list of small distractions. But I’ve seen this week how they peck away at some of my (traditionally) most productive hours.

Fortunately, most of my work this week was not on a particular deadline, but things like this blog got pushed back because I just couldn’t work as quickly as I am accustomed. Most freelancers are one-man operations with no one else to do the work. If you were only operating at 60% efficiency next week, how would your business suffer?

filed under: Running a Business