When your general health status falls, everything around you falls. For small business owners, this can include your business. While it is not always possible to avoid getting sick, taking preventative steps can help to lower your downtime and, as a byproduct, increase your businesses productivity.
How Your Health Affects Your Business
When you are sick, you are not able to effectively attend to the daily tasks associated with running your business. This means that quotas will not be met, objectives will not be completed, and deadlines may have to be pushed back. This is the most obvious way your health can affect your business. Here is a list including more of the ways being sick can affect things:
- Customer disputes may not be settled because you are not able to settle them.
- New products can not be put out because you are not able to sign off on them.
- Your employees productivity may be decreased since you are not able to actively push them.
- Customer and employee morale may be lowered.
- Your stress levels will increase which lowers your own productivity even after you have gotten over your illness.
- Illness can cause you to become depressed, irritable, or otherwise negative, which can severely impact your business relations.
There are numerous other ways in which your health may affect your business. Just as poor health can negatively affect your business, so can great health positively affect it. Continue reading for tips on staying healthy, as well as how to decrease your downtime if you do get sick.
Tips On Staying Healthy
Taking proper care of yourself is the best preventative measure in maintaining great health. Below are a few things you should ensure you do on a regular basis in order to keep in peak condition.
- Drink at least eight cups of water each day. This is equivalent to four average sized water bottles. Remember that certain things will increase your necessary water intake each day. If you live at a high altitude, in an extremely hot or cold environment, exercise, or are pregnant, you should drink more than eight cups of water each day.
- Aim for at least thirty minutes of moderate exercise each day.
- Eat a well balanced diet. A balanced diet includes protein, complex carbohydrates, fruits, and vegetables.
- Supplement your dietary needs with a multivitamin if necessary.
- Limit or avoid sugars, fats, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and fast food.
- Remember to take a little bit of time to yourself each day, as this dramatically lowers your stress levels. Even if you can only snag fifteen to twenty minutes to relax or do something you enjoy, it helps. Stress greatly lowers your immune system.
- Wash your hands and use hand sanitizer to reduce the risk of contracting an illness.
- Get at least eight hours of sleep every night. Your body needs to rest in order to restore itself.
Tips On Decreasing Your Downtime When You Do Get Sick
Sometimes there is no way to avoid getting sick. It happens to everyone, even if you do everything in your power to prevent it. Here are some things you can do to decrease your downtime when you do become sick, despite your best efforts to avoid it:
- Drink extra fluids. If you can not stomach water, make sure you drink clear drinks like Ginger Ale. You can also try to drink sports drinks or fortified drinks to stop you from becoming dehydrated.
- Get plenty of sleep. When your immune system is fighting off infection you need more sleep than normal. If you need to sleep eighteen hours for a day or two, then go ahead and do it.
- Go to the doctor when necessary.
- Take all medications the doctor prescribes you in full, even if you start feeling better after a day or two.
