Last Updated on January 20, 2022 by Jessica Adams
By their very nature, chronic illnesses and health conditions can get in the way of just about every aspect of life. However, while they can be a barrier, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be insurmountable.
Whether it’s chronic pain or a long-term health condition that you simply have to accommodate, it’s important to find some ways to deal with your condition while still pursuing your career dreams.
Here are some ways to manage your chronic illness while you focus on your career.
How to Manage a Chronic
Illness While Focused
On Your Career
Be Mindful To Not Over-Commit Yourself
Regardless of what it is, most people living with chronic health conditions will be able to agree that caring for their health takes up a lot of time.
Managing the condition, ensuring your own care and bouts of fatigue, can make it hard to spend as much time working in a single stretch as you would like.
For that reason, it’s important to make sure that you’re only taking on commitments that you must attend. You could try using time management strategies to make sure that you’re getting done what you need, in the most efficient way possible.
Create a System to Manage Your Life
Besides the time constraints, many chronic illnesses come with side effects and symptoms that can break concentration and diminish your ability to remember things.
From fatigue to brain fog to the side effects of medications, you may have to make up for difficulty in remembering details, and need to rely on systems that remember things for you.
Task management tools are great for offering a place that you can check and update regularly on what you need to get done so that an episode of brain fog doesn’t cause you to lose your place entirely.
Make Sure Your Care Team Is Working With You
Few people can help you acclimate to your work environment better than your healthcare team. While this may not make sense right away, I assure it does.
Having a solid relationship with your doctor can actually help you with your career inadvertently because they can help you gain access to the everyday treatments that will help remove some of the barriers between you and your career.
What’s more, it’s worth looking into potential plans of action with surgical services and physical therapists. If there is anything they can do to diminish your chronic pain, please take advantage of these services as you’ll be able to get a lot more done in a day.
This is crucial for helping you to return to some degree of independence, which you need to have if you want to excel in your career. Make sure that all members of your care team are communicating with one another to give you the best chance of the most effective treatments.
Ensure You Have the Support You Need
You most likely face enough barriers in your career, so don’t let your family and closest friends have to face them too! Letting them know about your condition and educating them on how it affects you can help them make sure they don’t inadvertently do anything to make it harder to cope with.
It also may help them to be more mindful in how they treat and help you, and to make it easier for you to focus on your career. The specifics of how you make your career work along with your attempts to manage your chronic illness depends on the specific condition you’re battling.
It also depends a lot on the career that you’re pursuing. Remember to involve your healthcare team by letting them know your goals so they can offer solutions to make your goals more achievable.
Edited by Jessica Rose Adams
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