Hustle culture says if you want it bad enough, you’ll make it happen. Chronic illness says, “Not so fast.” In this honest episode, April pulls back the curtain on what it means to build a business when your energy and body aren’t predictable. From working in bed and starting the day at noon to using voice-to-text and planning in pencil, she shares how she’s learned to honor her limits while still moving forward. You’ll learn how to theme your days, make gentle flexible plans, and release the guilt around slow progress — because rest is part of the work too.
💡 Key Takeaways & Quotes:
- “Sometimes my body doesn’t care how motivated I am.”
- “Planning in pencil has become my best productivity tool.”
- “Rest isn’t lazy — it’s part of the work.”
- “You’re not lazy, flaky, or behind. You’re living in a limited body and still showing up.”
- “I’m building a business that works with my body, not against it.”
🛠️ Tools, Resources & Mentions:
- Book: Growing Slow by Jennifer Dukes Lee
- Free Resource: The One-Minute Joy Journal
- Subscribe to The Unseen Sisterhood newsletter for weekly encouragement and faith-filled support.
👉 Ready to build a life that honors your body and your calling?
Join The Unseen Sisterhood for weekly encouragement, tools, and stories that remind you: you’re doing better than you think.
Join here →
Transcription
Today I’m going to talk about what it really looks like to work with a chronic illness as an entrepreneur. Spoiler alert, it’s not color-coded planners and miracle morning routines. It’s about pacing. It’s pivoting. It’s making peace with good enough and not perfect. What do you do when you’ve got deadlines to meet? a business to run and your body’s like no. Let’s talk about navigating productivity when your body has other plans. Are you struggling to stay positive and hopeful while dealing with your chronic illness? Has your illness impacted your relationship with family and friends? Do you want to regain your sense of belonging and have more love and compassion for yourself? Welcome to the Invisible Illness Club. If you’re ready to learn how to live a hope-filled life with your chronic illness, grab your favorite drink and listen in. There’s this idea floating around that if you want it bad enough, you’re going to make it happen. hustle culture, right? They love this.
Hustle, hustle, hustle. Wake up. Get up early. Stay consistent. Show up no matter what. Work, work, work all the time. But here’s the truth that no one likes to talk about. Sometimes my body does not care how motivated I am. There are days that I want to work, but I physically cannot. I plan to work. but I physically cannot. And no amount of vision boards, time blocking, or any other productivity hack you throw my way is going to change that. So let’s get real for a second. Here’s how productivity often looks like in my world. Working from bed, propped up on pillows with a laptop, tray table, something, and I am just going at it as best I can. Using voice to text helps me a lot when my hands hurt too much and I need to type. Starting the day at noon instead of 8 o’clock in the morning. Because the truth of the matter is when you wake up fatigued and exhausted every single day, starting early is not always an option. And planning in pencil.
This thing has become my new best friend because both figuratively and literally, my day changes all the time, right? I’ve had to unlearn what working as an entrepreneur should look like. I can’t do eight hour work days. I can’t do five days a week. I don’t always meet the deadlines that I need, that I have set for myself or that I need to meet. And I don’t always feel proud of what I get done, but I’ve learned that getting through it is a process and that done is often much better than perfect. some practical things that can help get stuff done even on the low, low, low energy days. Theming your days. I like this the most because I can group similar tasks together. So if I know that I need to batch record three or four of these podcast episodes, then I have time on Wednesday out of my week to do that, then I’m going to batch all that for that day.
And then if I know that on Friday, I can sit in bed watching TV and work on social media posts or engagement, that’s going to be a themed day for social media, right? I’ve also learned that on my worst days, I have to ask myself, what is one thing? not three, not two, just one thing that would move the needle a little bit further today. What’s that one thing that if I did right now, when I have just a tiny bit of energy, I can actually help move something in my business. Another thing is brain dumps. Write it all down, get it all out of your head. Because the truth of the matter is a lot of us are sitting around constantly thinking, about all the things we need to get done, we want to get done, we wish we could get done. Also constantly thinking about the pain in our left ankle right now, or that I need to pop my thumb again because the arthritis is high today. Brain dumping allows us to take all of those thoughts and get them out of our heads and onto a piece of paper.
Now, I did run into someone recently who doesn’t do well with writing, but does better if she records. So I encouraged her, and I’ll encourage some of you that might think the same thing. You’re thinking of writing all these things down and you’re like, oh goodness, no, I can’t do that. Take out your phone and do a recording. Just say all the things into, I don’t know, your video or a recording audio app or whatever you have. and just say it all out, get it all out of your head, every single word. That can be the way that you break down. Then what I want you to do after that is if you actually plan on doing some of those things this week, I want you to highlight one to three things max, no more than three, no more than three. And we’re talking for the whole week because this is gentle prioritizing. We’re not going to be throwing three things every single day. That won’t work for us.
It might work for people who don’t have chronic illnesses and are just living a general entrepreneurial life. But for us, we need one thing a day that we can actually pull out to do, or one thing for the week if it’s a rough week. But I want you to think about one to three things in there that you could do and highlight those. That becomes your flexible plan for the week, right? Which leads me into the flex plan. There can be three tiers to all of these things that you’ve written out. Must do, nice to do, and if I miraculously have energy left, I can do. Right? Which typically doesn’t happen. So I want you to think about putting these ideas, these things that you’ve written out into these categories. There are some things as an entrepreneur that I must do in order to continue to keep my business running and to keep the podcast running and all of that, make money, whatever it is that you’re doing.
There are some things you must do, especially if you have clients, you must do the client work. It would be nice to do some of these other things inside my business, but they can hold off if I can’t and I don’t have any energy. And then, of course, if I miraculously have any energy left, which we all know 9 times out of 10, that’s not happening. But if you have a little bit of energy left and you want to do one of those things, grab it off your list and do it. The other and final way I want to tell you about is body-based scheduling. I honor my body when it’s most awake and alert. And for me, that is early to mid afternoon. So we’re talking 11 o’clock till about 2 o’clock. I am most awake and most creative during that time. It’s not a lot of hours, right? So I have to go in and determine what during that time can I do if it’s a good day. If it’s a bad day physically, then I may not be able to do anything during that time unless it’s an absolute must.
So listening to our bodies is so important in all of this and understanding how we can work with our bodies to pace ourselves. I’m working on giving myself permission to take breaks before I crash, to outsource where I can, and to let things be messy, imperfect, and sometimes incomplete. That part’s big, okay, because productivity isn’t just about strategy. It’s about the stories that we tell ourselves. So if we work on shifting our mindset from rest is for the lazy, as in the hustle culture likes to tell us, to rest is a part of the work, we’ll change how we go about doing this. A few others are my value isn’t tied to my output. Because it’s not. I am not valued as a person by what I put out there for others to see, hear, use, purchase, whatever. Small steps still count. That’s important because even if I can’t make giant leaps this week, I can make some small steps. Working slowly does not mean I’m failing. There was a book I read a couple of years ago when I ran a different company.
that is called Growing Slow. And I wish I could remember who it’s by. I’ll put it down in the show notes. But Growing Slow was a book that really helped me understand that God doesn’t necessarily want us to do things quickly. He can make that happen, and sometimes we do. But if you look at the seasons that we have in this world, maybe not in Florida and Texas, but seasons that, you know, the North gets to enjoy, spring, summer, fall, and winter. If you look at seasons, you understand how the growing cycle works for plants, flowers, vegetables, all these different things that grow in soil. And you understand that it takes time for it to grow. So during the winter season, it is growing. It’s just growing under the surface and nobody sees anything until the spring. That book really helped me understand that I don’t have to do things immediately and quickly. I can do things at a slower pace and still be productive.
And then of course there’s this quote, I am building a business that works with my body, not against it. Well, literally my business is about chronic invisible illnesses. So I am literally building a business that works with my body and not against it. But I want you to take that with you also because there’s nothing wrong with you if you can’t do it like other people can. You’re not lazy. You’re not flaky. You’re just living in this body that has real limitations and you’re still showing up. That’s huge. Well, if you’ve ever felt like you’re not doing enough, if you have ever cried because your body interrupted yet another plan, if you’ve ever doubted your calling because of the capacity that you have in your body, mentally, physically, emotionally, I see you. I am you. You’re not behind. You’re not building something that is going to fall apart. You’re building something beautiful at your pace, in your way. So keep showing up, keep adjusting, keep listening to your body.
You don’t need to hustle for it to matter. Thanks for hanging out with me today. If this episode spoke to you, share it with a friend who gets it. And if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Until then, take care of yourself. You’re doing better than you think.