Sickness, and whether carrying on regardless is the best approach.

This week started unusually.  I awoke bright and early Monday morning (after getting an early night on Sunday) with a blocked nose, sore throat, aching all over and a terrible cough.  Whilst I'm quite happy to continue working through a common cold, this felt more severe....It was the dreaded Flu!  Cassie suggested I get some rest to recover, however since I've working within my own business I've been incredibly self conscious about taking time off sick.

Monday is ordinarily my admin day and therefore I decided to get the majority of this work completed from home, however after an hour of sitting in from of the laptop I soon realised that Cassie was right and I needed to get to bed and sleep to recover....after all Tuesday I had a full day in the diary and I needed to recover in time for that!

The remainder of Monday was a daze where I slept to recover, however I woke on Tuesday and didn't feel much better!  The self concious streak kicked in again and I told myself I couldn't miss the meetings I had in the diary.  However I was still sneezing, coughing and spluttering constantly, so a productive day of meetings was highly unlikely in my current state!  I decided to cancel the meetings I had in the diary and take the time to recover, but still felt quite guilty having to rearrange these appointments.  Therefore it was back to bed to continue to recover from my bug. 

So, guess what happened.  Nothing.  The clients and introducer's I had meetings with on Tuesday understood, wished me better and rearranged and we had a few new client enquiries come in.  I felt better today and naturally I've had more emails, client calls and to reply to and I've had to catch up on the work missed on Monday however I'm glad I took the couple of full days to recover.

Whilst I'm a firm believer in working hard and ensuring that I do a great job for my clients, in the past I've sometimes been guilty of trying to work through the sickness with the end result being that I've been unwell, and therefore less productive, for a longer period of time.  Sometimes when you run your own business it's easy to get into a habit of making a ridiculous assumption that without you everything will fall apart if you're not there and I know that previous conversations with other business owners I know I'm not alone.

Whilst it's undeniable that if you had a prolonged period of absence from your business it would suffer, would a day or two have a genuine impact?  You may decide that it's better just to 'carry on regardless' however I've got to question whether that approach is either sensible, or counter productive...especially when it applies to your health.  Today I felt well enough to continue with my normal day and whilst still suffering from a cough and sniffles I'm feeling a lot better.  The big question is whether I'd feel like this if I hadn't taken the time to recover.

So, what do you think....is it more important to just fight through the sickness and continue working?  Does it make you feel more productive if you work through a cold or flu?  Or do you believe that you should take the time you need to recover and not worry about the business for a couple of days?  Also, do you think it's tougher as a business owner to take this time off?