Taking a Sick Day as a Freelance Writer
When I work up this morning I was not feeling well. My neck was stiff, my head hurt, and my stomach was upset. Fortunately, after a few minutes of walking around I began to feel better. During this time I got to thinking about taking sick days as a freelance writer. When you work for a company you can call in sick and forget about your job for the day. Of course, this is not the same if you work as a freelance writer. Since I have so many clients it would be difficult to stay away from the computer for an entire day.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with taking a sick day as a freelance writer. If you are not feeling well and know that you cannot do your best writing you should think about staying in bed for the time being. It is better to take the day off than it is to head for the computer and complete work that is not up to your standards.
If you are going to take a sick day make sure you are not missing any deadlines. What if I do have a deadline to meet? In this case, I would suggest either doing your best to get the work to your client on time or contacting the proper party and asking them for a one day extension. All of my clients are more than happy to give me an extra day if I have a good reason. Of course, this is not something I abuse because I strongly believe in turning in all work on time.
Freelance writers can get sick just like everybody else. If you wake up one day and realize that you are not feeling up to par, you may want to think about taking a sick day. Just make sure that your day off is not going to negatively effect your clients.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:26 am
I very rarely get sick, but when I do it’s usually quite bad. As long as you aren’t the type to regularly scream “flu!” or something, I’ve found clients are usually easy to work with. If I’m not feeling incredibly ill, but just a bit under the weather, I try to work from bed if possible.
This is also one of the reasons I go through my work list a while before bed each night. If there’s something scheduled for the following day that I could hammer out in an hour or less, I do it that night “just in case.” It takes away the stress of the following morning a bit with a lighter workload staring me in the face, and if I do get sick or just have an “off day,” it’s OK if I’m not quite as quick or productive as usual.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Jenn - That is a great tip. If you can get something done, go for it. This way if you are slow in the morning, for whatever reason, there is not as much stress.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I know a lot of people won’t dare work on Sundays (and others mostly work weekends, so they have to). But I’ve found this most effective Sunday evenings - it really takes the edge off of your Monday morning. Second to that, I like working late on Thursdays. If I can get my Friday deadlines met the night before, I let myself take off earlier, enjoy some more downtime, or work on my own projects (less pressure) on Friday.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Great tips Jenn and nice post Chris. On the few occasions where I’ve felt sick enough that I didn’t feel I’d do my best job writing a finished article, I’ve still found other ways to be productive. If working on an article or a series of blog posts that involves minor research, I’ll still compile some basic facts. I’ve taken the time to outline the scope of an upcoming article. I’ve also used the time to revamp or refine my blog posting schedule, or even pre-write some basic blog posts for future use. When on the rare occasion I am sick, I’ve found that it isn’t that I can’t work at all, but that I’m not as good at the type of tasks that require complete focus or concentration. There are plenty of basic tasks that a writer has to do during a week that don’t require 100% focus and concentration though and you can just reschedule some of those into the day that you’re feeling under the weather.