The Strange Productivity of Being Stuck in Bed

When Progress Doesn’t Look the Way You Planned

There are seasons of life that feel aligned, energized, and full of possibility.

And then there are seasons that arrive with a sudden thud.

Sometimes literally.

Last week I took a fall down the stairs that has left me mostly confined to bed. It wasn’t exactly how I envisioned this phase of building Leaders on Edge. My plan for the week looked very different: filming content, recording videos, diving deeper into the research behind the framework, and finally putting some of the pieces into motion that have been sitting in notebooks for months.

Instead, I’ve been horizontal.

Not exactly camera-ready.

But strangely, still moving forward.

Progress Doesn’t Always Look the Way We Imagine

One of the things leadership teaches you—especially in healthcare—is that progress rarely follows the timeline you planned.

You prepare.

You organize.

You build momentum.

And then life inserts its own agenda.  And in that moment you pivot.

For me, that meant trading a camera and whiteboard for a laptop balanced on a pillow while working from bed. Instead of recording videos, I spent the week deep in the architecture of the Leaders on Edge website—building out pages, refining the framework language, strengthening the structure behind the work I’m creating.

It wasn’t the progress I planned.

But it was still progress.

And sometimes that distinction matters more than we realize.

The Reality of Different Seasons

We talk a lot about growth like it’s one continuous upward climb.

But real life doesn’t work that way.

There are seasons of acceleration.

And there are seasons that force you to slow down.

Some seasons feel expansive and exciting.
Others feel uncertain, uncomfortable, and a little scary.

Ironically, sometimes those feelings happen at the same time.

This moment of my life is exactly that.

There is an incredible amount of momentum building around Leaders on Edge—the framework, the conversations, the connections with people who believe leadership can be more human and more sustainable.

And at the same time, stepping away from the familiar structures of traditional leadership roles and building something new carries its own level of uncertainty.

That tension is real.

Growth and fear often travel together.

The Unexpected Gift of Slowing Down

For the past year, I’ve joked that I’m basically pretending to be a graphic designer.

Mostly because I downloaded Canva and found myself constantly playing around in it—experimenting with colors, layouts, icons, and ideas for Leaders on Edge graphics.

I would laugh and say something like, “Apparently I’m a graphic designer now.”

But if I’m honest, most of that time was surface-level experimentation. I was moving quickly, trying things, adjusting, but never really slowing down enough to fully learn the program.

Being stuck in bed this week forced a different pace.

With fewer places to go and fewer ways to move around, I had the chance to actually sit with it. To explore the tools more intentionally. To learn how the program works instead of just clicking around and hoping for the best.

And something interesting happened.

The images I’m creating are starting to look exactly the way I want them to.

The graphics for the framework.
The visuals for the leadership capacity work.
The diagrams that explain the concepts behind Roots & Edge.

Instead of feeling like someone pretending to design things, I’m starting to feel like I actually understand how to build the visuals that bring the ideas to life.

But the Canva learning curve wasn’t the only unexpected productivity of the week.

Because when you’re stuck in bed, you either stare at the ceiling… or you start organizing your life.

This unexpected pause has allowed me to push my first mini-course much closer to completion. A project that has lived in scattered notes, voice memos, and half-written documents is finally starting to come together into something real that will be launching soon.

I’ve also had the chance to connect with some incredible people during this time. Conversations that remind me why I started building this work in the first place. One of those connections even led to an invitation to be a guest on the Voices of Hospice Leadership podcast—something I’m genuinely excited about because it creates space to talk about leadership in hospice in a deeper, more meaningful way.

And then there’s the less glamorous but very necessary work that most entrepreneurs quietly wrestle with.

My computer.

Which, until recently, looked like digital chaos.

Folders inside folders.

Documents saved under names that made sense at the time but now require detective work to decipher.

At one point I realized I was spending more time looking for work I had already done than actually doing new work.

One of the perks of ADHD, I suppose.

So this forced slowdown also became a chance to start cleaning up the backend of my work—organizing files, renaming documents, and creating systems that might actually help future me find things without going on a scavenger hunt through my hard drive.

Not the most glamorous progress.

But very necessary progress.

Leadership Lessons Show Up in Ordinary Moments

One of the most interesting things about building a leadership framework is realizing how often the principles show up in everyday life.

Leadership is not just something that happens in boardrooms or strategy meetings.

It shows up in how you respond when your plans fall apart.

It shows up in whether you allow frustration to take over or whether you adjust and keep moving forward.

It shows up in your ability to zoom out and recognize that temporary setbacks are not the same as failure.

Sometimes leadership looks like making hard decisions.

Sometimes leadership looks like guiding a team through uncertainty.

And sometimes leadership simply looks like patience with yourself.

Building Even When It’s Messy

This week wasn’t polished.

It wasn’t Instagram-ready.

It definitely wasn’t camera-ready.

But it was real.

And in many ways, the work that happened quietly this week—writing, structuring ideas, learning new tools, organizing systems, and finishing pieces of projects that have been waiting for attention—may end up being some of the most important groundwork for what comes next.

Because building something meaningful is rarely glamorous.

It’s often messy.

Slow.

Unexpected.

And filled with moments that force you to adjust.

Keep Showing Up

If there’s one thing this week reinforced for me, it’s this:

Progress is not defined by perfect conditions.

Progress is defined by continuing to show up.

Even when you’re frustrated.

Even when you’re uncomfortable.

Even when your plans have to change.

The season might look different than you imagined.

But that doesn’t mean the work stops.

Sometimes it just happens from bed with a laptop, a Canva window open, a mini-course coming together, and a slightly more organized computer than the week before.

And sometimes that’s enough.