If you want to be productive, take good care of yourself.

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Never underestimate the power of discomfort to thwart your productivity, friends.

This is embarrassing, but I’ve apparently been wearing my contacts in the wrong eyes for the last 2+ years. Which might have been okay, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m not just nearsighted, I also have astigmatism in both eyes. So what I’ve been doing is something akin to wearing my right shoe on my left foot and vice versa. Not ideal.

I only realized it after my second migraine of the season. These nightmarish headaches are new to me (if you’re guessing around 2 years new, you’re right) and after the last one, I wasn’t bouncing back as well as I’d like. Lots of low-grade nausea and a kind of pain echo that just wouldn’t fade away. “It’s these dang contacts,” I thought. “This prescription has always been off.” Then again, what if it wasn’t? Out of pure desperation, I tried switching them... the relief was almost instantaneous.

Aaaaand my productivity shot up.

It makes sense. For so long now I’ve sat hunched at my desk, squinting at the monitor, rubbing my eyes every few moments to get the weights in my contacts pointing in the right direction for a second or two before they rotated off again, my neck and shoulders tense with the effort to make sense of the swimming letters on the screen… now that I think about it, how could I possibly have been productive working like that?

Folks, take care of yourselves out there. Pain, dehydration, subpar nutrition, not enough sleep, ill-fitting contact lenses—none of these things are conducive to a productive workday. Take care of yourself first; productivity will follow.

Photo by Christina Victoria Craft

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