February has been a bit of a struggle bus health-wise for me with a week-and-a-half long cough situation which impacted my sleep, energy, and focus and therefore threw my life and work all wonky. An acute illness is a hit and run that derails ‘normal life’ for a chunk of time until I recover.

We know how to be healthy. The baseline of health is enough sleep, nourishing food, lots of water, plenty of movement, and meaningful social relationships. 

And yet, making healthy decisions as a working human adult requires we be the boss of our lives – a skill we are not taught but which we must learn.

The biggest challenge of working for myself is that I am my own boss across all aspects of work and life. I make all the decisions and either reap the rewards or deal with the consequences. 

I decide how I allocate my time across work, life and rest. I’m responsible for guiding my growth as a person and a professional. I’m in charge of how much I’m willing to push back against a lot of ill-fitting social and professional norms ingrained through the systems of school, college, and the ‘corporate’ workplace.

There is simplicity and power in understanding how much ownership I need to have around a cascade of decisions as a professional, an adult, and a human existing in the world. Learning to be the boss of my business helps me be the boss of my life. 

The siren call of working remotely is powerful and has a lot of benefits. You supposedly have more freedom to maybe build a healthy life while still being a working professional for a company. 

But when I first went remote while still having a corporate boss and related bureaucracy, I struggled breaking out of the arbitrary – and unhealthy -  rules telling me to stay in the chair until the bell rings instead of working when my mind is the most powerful or taking a true break. Or being ‘available’ for work DMs just in case I needed to ‘be responsive’ when what I needed was Do Not Disturb mode so I could do deep and meaningful work. 

That’s not a healthy way to live as a remote professional. Nor as my own boss. 

The tricky part of investing in your health is learning how to take true ownership over your work and life. To be the boss. It’s making the decisions and tradeoffs to support your health, like getting enough sleep.

One of my goals for 2026 is to give myself at least 7 - 8 hours of sleep opportunity most nights so that hopefully I’ll average 7+ hours of actual sleep. That’s 15 minutes more than my 2025 average according to my Fitbit.

Shifting my sleep-related inputs to move toward this goal means redesigning a few of my defaults like my morning wake up routine which then impacts my work capacity and availability. I’m no longer available for meetings before 10:30 AM. 

Designing instead of defaulting might mean pushing back on assumptions and expectations either internal or external. 

What ‘shoulds’ are you willing to abandon to be the boss of your health? 

I’m the boss of my life, and in the end, work won’t love me back. So, I choose to sleep more.