On Business, Rest, and Care: Rethinking Work Through the Body

For almost a decade, I lived with unexplained symptoms. When I finally received a diagnosis for a genetic condition, it was both grounding and disorienting. It gave language to what I had been navigating for years, while also unsettling many of the assumptions I had made about the future: how I would work, what I would build, and how much I could reasonably expect from myself.

That reckoning was physical, but it was also philosophical. It required me to re-examine ideas I had absorbed almost without noticing: that productivity was a measure of worth, that consistency meant sameness, that effort should be invisible.

I had to accept that my days would look different from the ones I once imagined. Managing my health takes time. Rest is not optional. Focus arrives in intervals rather than long, uninterrupted stretches.

And yet, I run a business. I work with clients. I create and contribute. Entrepreneurship became the structure that made this possible, not in spite of my body, but in relationship with it. It allowed me to build a way of working that could flex and adapt, rather than asking me to constantly override my limits.

This is why small business matters to me, and why I see it as something larger than personal ambition. At its best, it offers a way of designing work that can respond to the realities of human bodies, rather than demanding they conform to an abstract ideal.

The problem with traditional work

The traditional nine-to-five model rests on a narrow set of assumptions that many people do not, and cannot, meet.

That you can sit at a desk for hours at a time. That commuting carries no cumulative cost. That your energy can be switched on reliably, day after day, without consequence.

For people living with chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence, mental health conditions, or caregiving responsibilities, these assumptions often collapse on contact with reality. Many carry invisible weight at work, managing symptoms, postponing medical care, or masking difficulty in order to appear reliable. Opportunities are missed not through lack of skill or ambition, but because the structures themselves are inflexible.

In many workplaces, fluctuation, rest, and recovery are treated as disruptions rather than as ordinary aspects of being human. Capacity is expected to be consistent, even though bodies rarely are.

Small business as disruption

This is where small business becomes important, and, for some of us, essential.

It offers a way of organising work around the truth of our bodies. It allows days to be shaped by capacity rather than appearance, weeks to be structured around health rather than endurance, and contributions to be made in focused, meaningful intervals.

In a culture preoccupied with scale, speed, and constant visibility, choosing to build a business at a pace your body can hold is a quiet refusal. It is an act of care. A decision to step outside systems that were never designed with all bodies in mind.

This does not mean entrepreneurship is the right path for everyone, nor does it suggest that running a business is easy or universally accessible. But it does point to something more fundamental: that work itself should be capable of adaptation. That flexibility should not be a perk, but a baseline.

What illness taught me about business

Living with chronic illness has taught me one of the most important lessons of my life.

You can rest and still build.

Progress does not disappear when you step back, provided the foundations beneath the work are considered and the systems supporting it are steady. With limited energy, I had to become more intentional. I learned to work with clarity rather than urgency, to remove distractions, and to stop chasing every new tactic that promised momentum at the cost of sustainability.

I began to design workflows that could hold the work when I could not. Structures that allowed me to step away without everything unravelling. This shift away from pushing through and toward designing for continuity reshaped how I thought about success, productivity, and growth.

It also shaped every part of Studio Founded. From the kinds of products I create, to the pace at which I work, to the way I think about long-term sustainability, my business became an extension of these lessons rather than a site of constant negotiation against them.

A Broader Invitation

My story is only one among many.

There are countless people navigating chronic conditions, mental health challenges, caregiving responsibilities, and lives that do not fit neatly inside a fixed schedule. The past few years offered a brief glimpse of what work might look like if it were organized differently. If presence were measured by contribution rather than hours, and if flexibility were understood as essential rather than exceptional.

Creativity, leadership, and meaningful contribution do not take a single form. They unfold differently depending on context, capacity, and care.

So I leave you with a few questions to sit with.

If you run a business, how might you design it to honour your body and your energy, rather than asking you to work against them?

If you work within traditional structures, what forms of flexibility would allow you not just to function, but to thrive?

And for all of us, what might shift if we stopped measuring worth by endurance and hours alone, and began measuring it by thoughtfulness, sustainability, and care?

This piece is part of my ongoing exploration into branding as cultural commentary. I’m Hannah Shaw, founder of Studio Founded, a design practice and resource library for founders.

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