Illness insights
On experiencing time while sick with COVID
Today’s message is short because I’ve spent the week in bed with COVID. (Let it be known from the outset that I am very grateful to my in-laws who have helped my husband keep our household running this week.)
My experience of COVID this week has been that I am so terribly sick and miserable that I can’t do much. Even a load of laundry would wipe me out. All I could do was just experience the misery for what it is. I was tired but couldn’t nap especially well (which is not my norm), and so, the hours between wakeup and bedtime seemed long and strange. Time felt different. It didn’t feel pressured or anxiety-inducing, like it normally might. It was just something to experience—in my achy body, in the bedroom/bathroom suite to which I was confined, segregating me from the rest of the family.
I’m writing about this here because it connects to something I started writing about last week. Our experience of time is not constant. Our time perceptions can change. COVID showed me this very clearly. I stopped always having a sense of what time it is and what’s next on my schedule, noting the number of minutes before the next meeting. Before the illness hit me, I had in my head a series of big tasks I needed to get done this week, but when I felt miserable, that plan disappeared (thankfully without much inconvenience).
As I’ve started feeling better, I’ve tried working a little, and the relaxed feeling about time that COVID has brought on for me and that I am still experiencing is changing how I work. I am more focused, more calm, and more easily able to identify the next small step in a project and get it done.
I’m sure what I’m feeling right now won’t last as I keep getting better and once again have to go to meetings and classes throughout the day. And of course, COVID is not the answer to productivity. Instead, the key point I want to highlight is this: when our time perception changes, how we work changes. This point strikes me as really powerful.
Stay tuned as I continue to consider how deliberately changing our time perceptions can make us more productive.
Also—I was on a podcast! Check out my conversation with Dr. Bethany Wilinski on Sabbatical 101. We talk about juggling multiple priorities and managing unstructured time.