Working from the body you have

I don’t always talk about this. But it’s part of who I am and why I do what I do, so it makes sense that it’s here.

I have a chronic illness. I won’t name it because that’s not the most relevant part. What matters is what it means: days when my body cooperates and days when it doesn’t, periods of high productivity followed by stretches where there’s simply no energy for anything. A relationship with work that can’t be linear because the body isn’t either.

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to accept that this was my reality. For a long time I operated by trying to ignore it, acting as if pushing hard enough, resting correctly enough, optimizing my routine well enough would let me function like everyone else. It’s not sustainable. And it’s not honest.

What I did learn, over time, is to work differently.

I learned to distinguish which tasks I can do with low energy and which ones need me at my best. To plan with margin, not at the edge. To understand that rest isn’t wasted time but part of the process, even when that’s hard to believe when you have too many ideas and too few good hours in a day.

Most of all, I learned that productivity takes many forms that don’t fit the standard eight-hours-of-constant-output model.

That changed how I think about technology.

When I design a tool or think about how a system should work, I can’t help but think about the people for whom the standard model doesn’t work. People with different bodies, with energy that varies, with schedules that don’t fit the molds most products take for granted.

Accessibility, for me, isn’t an optional feature. It’s the question of whether the system you’re building assumes everyone functions the same way. And the answer is almost always yes, and that excludes a lot of people.

I don’t have a manifesto about this. Just the experience of being on the side that tech so often forgets to design for, and the drive to see that change.