How to be Productive when You’re Sick

By: Antonia Le ‘22

Last weekend, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had a rough draft of my WP-4 for my Writing 150 class due on Monday, but I was also coughing my brains out every five minutes, and the last thing I wanted to do was write.

Everyone knows that the worst time to be sick is when you’ve got a big deadline or test coming up, and sometimes getting an extension just isn’t possible. Sometimes, when the forces of the universe conspire against you, you’ve just gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get to work. I managed to do it this past weekend, and you can too. Here are some of my tips for staying productive on sick days!

1. Accept your fate

If you’re anything like me, you’re the kind of person who will go to the ends of the earth telling everyone “I’m not that sick! It’s just a sniffle!” when you’ve really got a raging fever. But, in my experience, I’ve learned that denying your sickness and pushing yourself too hard often makes things worse. Instead, come to terms with the fact that your body is fighting some bacteria or virus, and take precautions to speed up the healing process and stop your sickness from spreading to others.

However, I’m not saying that you should fully submit to your sickness and do nothing for a whole week if you’re in a good enough condition to work (if you’re actually not in a good enough condition to do anything, see a doctor!). In accepting your fate, you must also accept that some deadlines and test dates are non-negotiable, and you’ll have to power through what you must in order to keep on track.

In the end, it’s a balancing act: take care of your health, but also take care of your studies so that you don’t fall too behind.

2. Be realistic

If you’re going to power through your sickness to churn out an essay or study for a quiz, don’t hold your sick self to the same expectations that you would hold your healthy self to. Recognize the fact that constant coughing or intermittent sneezing might hamper your focus a little bit, and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get as much done as you’d like to. Instead, congratulate yourself on completing little tasks. A little positivity, while still maintaining a realistic mindset, goes a long way in helping you complete all you need to get done.

3. Take cold showers

Sometimes, when I’m feeling sick, my internal temperature gets hot enough so that I’ll feel the heat in my face and become distracted by it, but it won’t be so high that it would be considered a fever that could make me comfortably justify stepping away from my work. Though I know that resting, regardless of if I have a fever or not, is the healthiest option, I also know that doing that isn’t always feasible.

Instead, to mitigate this source of distraction and feeling of sickness, I change up my shower routine, taking full cold showers instead of hot ones, or taking a hot shower to clear my sinuses and then changing the water temperature to cold for the last few minutes. The cold water helps wake me up and gives me a mental reset that helps me focus better when I’m back to work. Furthermore, the cold feeling lingers for a while after I’ve stepped out of the bathroom, and this coldness helps to temporarily counter the distracting hot feeling, helping me focus even more.

4. Tea is your best friend

I’m generally a coffee girl, but if I’m sick, you’ll often find me with a mug of tea by my side. The steam from the tea does wonders for clearing your sinuses, if you’re suffering from that sort of thing. Moreover, the warmth of the tea will help ease your sore throat. If your tea has any mint in it, then the menthol flavor will help with decongestion. Many other types of tea have various health benefits, so find what you like.

I also stick to tea when I’m sick because of its flavor. Most teas aren’t as bitter as black coffee, and thus I don’t feel the need to dilute the tea with milk or sugar like I do with coffee. Dairy can worsen mucus production if that’s one of your big problems, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that consuming even small amounts of sugar too fast can give me headaches, which kill my productivity. Moreover, teas still have caffeine, which helps keep you wake up when all you want to do is sleep.

Drinking tea has saved my life these past few weeks, and I’m sure it’ll continue helping me throughout the rest of my college career.

5. Alternate hot and cold

For me, drinking only hot tea when I’m sick can dry out my throat, which leaves a dry, sandpaper-y feeling in my throat that can sometimes affect the way I talk. This feeling drives me crazy and distracts me to no end; to alleviate it, I drink ice-cold water between every few sips of tea. The coldness of the water lessens the heat and prevents it from drying out my throat, while also helping me to wake me up in a natural way so that I’m not wholly dependent on caffeine to stay awake and study. Alternating hot and cold gives me the best of both worlds; I get the symptom-relieving effects of hot tea, while also getting a desperately needed energy boost I get from water.

6. Take short naps

When I’m sick, all I want to do is lie in bed for hours on end, but that often isn’t feasible. Instead, I take ten, fifteen, or twenty minute naps whenever I feel as if my body can’t survive any longer.

Naps that are thirty minutes or greater have been shown to leave people feeling groggier and more tired than they were before they started sleeping. Long naps send people into deep sleep stages, and waking up from these deep sleep stages often creates a fog that some have likened to a sleep hangover. You can counteract these effects by taking a ninety minute nap: ninety minute naps send you through one full sleep cycle, so you end up waking up from a light sleep stage instead of a deep one, which helps with alertness. However, ninety minute naps are dangerous, because if they’re poorly timed, they can negatively affect the way you sleep the following night.

This is why I swear by naps that are twenty minutes or shorter. They keep you in the lightest sleep stage so that you’re not groggy when you wake up, and they don’t adversely affect your full night’s sleep like ninety minute naps do. Yet, despite their short length, these naps still improve alertness, creativity, and focus.

The next time you’re studying while sick, considering giving yourself a short study break and having nap-time. Your brain (and your professors) will thank you.

7. Get some fresh air

If you’re the kind of person who studies in your room, then I would advise you to open your windows. Depending on the weather, you may or may not want to go outside, but it’s always good to be breathing nice air instead of the same (often musty) air you get from sitting a small, enclosed space all day. Your body will definitely thank you for some fresh oxygen, and you’ll feel better because of it. Sure, you’re still living in LA, and the air isn’t as clean as if you were living in rural Nebraska, but it’s sure a lot better for you than the germy air of your bedroom.

Having to study while sick is hard for everyone, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Making a few small changes can do wonders for your mood and productivity. So, the next time you’re sick and you need to get your work done, I hope you will consider my tips. Until then, stay healthy, and good luck on your finals!

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