Wholeheartedly agree with this. This covers most of the things I do / aspire to do to manage my own chronic condition.
One area that you don’t really mention is finding work that is flexible and offers social support for the measures you’re implementing for yourself. If your productivity is unreliable, it is a very bad thing to be working a job with lots of hard deadlines, or where your lack of progress will immediately block your co-workers from progressing in their own work. It’s also important to prevent others from assuming you have more slack than you actually do.
In this area, I’ve found pre-committing to be an extremely valuable tool. When I work towards a deadline, I discuss with my boss in advance how bad it would be to miss the deadline, and what our plan B would be in that case (e.g. if 1 week before the deadline things are looking bad, we cut X which we agree is non-essential). This prevents high-stakes, high-pressure discussions from happening while I am in a health crisis, and protects my professional reputation. You don’t want to find out 1 week before the deadline that your boss actually considers X to be essential! Better to find out a month in advance and adjust your plans accordingly.
Wholeheartedly agree with this. This covers most of the things I do / aspire to do to manage my own chronic condition.
One area that you don’t really mention is finding work that is flexible and offers social support for the measures you’re implementing for yourself. If your productivity is unreliable, it is a very bad thing to be working a job with lots of hard deadlines, or where your lack of progress will immediately block your co-workers from progressing in their own work. It’s also important to prevent others from assuming you have more slack than you actually do.
In this area, I’ve found pre-committing to be an extremely valuable tool. When I work towards a deadline, I discuss with my boss in advance how bad it would be to miss the deadline, and what our plan B would be in that case (e.g. if 1 week before the deadline things are looking bad, we cut X which we agree is non-essential). This prevents high-stakes, high-pressure discussions from happening while I am in a health crisis, and protects my professional reputation. You don’t want to find out 1 week before the deadline that your boss actually considers X to be essential! Better to find out a month in advance and adjust your plans accordingly.