’ve been teaching work boundaries for more than a decade. I know all the stats—and still I worked right through being sick.

It was day two of a cold. I had three major deadlines that week, and while it was relatively easy to reschedule my coaching calls and client luncheons, those deliverables wouldn’t finish themselves. Sometimes there is no other day. Sometimes things can’t be rescheduled. It’s part of the gig.

Could I have slept and relaxed? Yes.

Would a delay have negatively impacted the work outcomes? Yes.

Would it have impacted my and our company’s reputation if I didn’t get those out? Maybe.

So I dug deep and worked through my illness.

Here’s the deal: there will always be times of hard work. There will always be times when more effort than we want to expend is required. Given my role as a coach in boundaries, it’s easy for others to assume that I am always “balanced” or have perfect boundaries.

Being balanced and boundaried is not the same thing as saying no all the time, or even whenever I want to (needs and wants are not the same thing). It simply means being aligned and making a conscious choice—and being good with the outcome of that choice.

When my entire family is sick and my kid is throwing up—we are all just plain miserable—someone still needs to make dinner. Someone still needs to feed the dog. There are some things that still have to happen, regardless of how much I just want to sleep.

Blip—cool.

Theme—problem.

If this is a continuous or regular theme, that points to a bigger issue. Possibly the issue is a mindset issue. Possibly the issue is a workload/work structure or workflow issue. Repetitive or continuous themes point to a bigger problem or an underlying broken structure that needs to be resolved.

Blips? Well, that’s just life.

It reminds me of a conversation during a group coaching call with some execs from a fast-paced tech company. I asked a woman during the call what helped her when she felt overwhelmed—what tool did she have to support herself when the workload was unmanageable. She paused, looked sheepishly at the camera and all the faces on our Zoom call, and responded with, “Well… I don’t think you really want to know this, maybe I shouldn’t even say it, but—well, I work a Saturday.”

I think my response shocked her. It was, “Great! That’s a wonderful tool.” This was a coaching call on boundaries after all.

She continued with, “Yeah, but that’s not a good boundary.” Right. Good recognition. However, reality is still reality. And having that as a tool was a good solution in that moment, especially since it provided her some much-needed stress relief. Did it fix the overall problem? No. Did it offer her some immediate relief? Yes. So it was a temporary band-aid. Sometimes we need these.

And then I asked the group, “Anyone else here ever work a Saturday?” Every single hand went up.

It’s working multiple Saturdays. It’s working every Saturday.

The problem is when that Saturday becomes your trendline.

If you find and use a tool that causes you to extend yourself on occasion that works—fine. So be it. If that’s the only tool that gets you through all the work, though, that’s a problem.

The issue I see is that many of us only have one tool. We only have that Saturday. We only have working late into the evenings or going to work at 6 a.m. every morning for some quiet time. We only have extending ourselves in exchange for getting the work done. We haven’t figured out how to incorporate strategic time or focus time into the midst of our busy days. We haven’t claimed our space or had the crucial conversations that enable us to get that time for ourselves during our regular work hours. We haven’t offered ourselves permission for that cup of coffee to unwind mid-week—even though we worked 50-plus hours just last week.

There are multiple tools we can start to incorporate to offer us more relief, help shift our perspectives, and shift our approach to work. There are multiple tools that ultimately help us learn how to change our work structures and figure out what’s truly getting in the way and causing us to work all those Saturdays. That way, the occasional Saturday is just that—occasional.

Next time you work through a Saturday, be gentle and offer yourself some grace. And if you work through many of them, be firm and honor your boundaries. Find the balance between these two worlds and recognize that, sometimes, we are going to work when we are sick. Sometimes, we still have to make that dinner even when we feel like absolute crap. And, by golly, that’s a miracle in itself.

But next week, I’m taking that day off.

And I might even take two.