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The TL;DR (Executive Summary)
My shoulder is improving, but recovery has been slower and less predictable than I’d like. Now my knee has decided it wants some (unwanted) attention, too.
A new setback can make earlier progress feel invisible, but it doesn’t make that progress disappear.
Health affects the energy, patience, and presence we bring to our work. Pretending otherwise isn’t a business strategy.
Moving forward sometimes means changing what progress looks like (for a while).
For those of you keeping score, my shoulder is getting better. I have more range of motion than I did before, and I can see the work paying off in that area. Then I reach a certain point in certain movements, and I’m reminded that “better” and “finished” are (unfortunately) two very different things.
I’m working at it. I’ve been doing the exercises and showing up for the appointments. While I know recovery takes time, it doesn’t mean I enjoy hearing that I still have a ways to go.
Here’s the thing: While I’m trying to be patient with my shoulder, my right knee started hurting. Really badly at first. It’s better, but it still ain’t great. Apparently, dealing with one body part at a time was too much to ask.
The knee has been evaluated, and I’m working through what comes next. But the practical effect is familiar to anyone who has dealt with a setback: The things you were doing to feel stronger suddenly need another look.
Take my knee (please). Since I started PT, I've been walking with dumbbells and even hitting the Y to use the elliptical there. I was doing either or pretty much every day of the week. And I was absolutely crushing it, which I needed to do, since I can’t really do any other higher-intensity exercise right now like I did before all of this happened: going to my local gym 4-5 days a week for full-body functional strength training and playing lots of pickleball.
Now, with my knee constantly complaining, I’m pretty much just doing PT at home daily and going to the therapist twice a week. Compared to what I was doing prior to all of this happening, and even with what I was doing before my knee flared up, that’s frustrating as hell. And when the routine that helped you show up as well for your work disappears, the effect doesn’t stay at the gym.
When Better Doesn’t Feel Like Enough
The strange part is that I am making progress. My shoulder can do things it couldn’t do earlier in recovery. If I looked only at where I started and where I am now, I’d have reason to feel encouraged. Many days, I do.
But it’s easy to judge progress by the thing(s) you still can’t do. That limitation gets your attention every time you reach for something or try a movement that used to be automatic. Then a new problem shows up, and your mind starts lumping everything together: the shoulder, the knee, the disrupted routine, the plans you now have to reconsider. Suddenly the story sounds like, “I keep going backward.”
That’s how it can feel. It isn’t the whole story.
The work I’ve done on my shoulder still counts, and the strength and capacity I’ve built over the years still count, too. A sore knee doesn’t reach back in time and cancel any of it, but it does mean I need to respond to what’s happening now, which may be the least glamorous part of getting older: accepting new information without treating it as a verdict on the future.
The Body Comes to Work With Us
I’ve been thinking and writing more about the connection between health and business because I’m living it. Your business does not run separately from your body. It runs through it.
That’s easy to nod along with when you’re feeling good. It becomes much more concrete when pain affects your sleep, an appointment breaks up your day, or you spend mental energy figuring out which activities are possible. You can still serve clients, lead a team, create, and make good decisions. But you’re doing all of that with the body you have today, not the one you wish had shown up this morning.
In sales and business, we talk a lot about consistency. Usually that translates to producing the same level of activity regardless of what else is going on. I’m coming to think a more useful version is staying committed to the work while being willing to adjust how you do it. Some days, that means doing the important thinking when your energy is best. It may mean protecting time for recovery instead of treating it as an inconvenience that has to squeeze around everything else.
I’m still learning this myself. When a physical setback changes my plans, my first instinct is to get back to normal as quickly as possible. But trying to force yesterday’s plan onto today’s circumstances doesn’t make me more effective; instead, it just adds another fight to an already frustrating situation.
Change the Plan, Keep the Direction
I truly don’t want to make every ache into a business metaphor. Sometimes a knee hurts and you need to deal with a damn hurting knee. Still, I think there’s a lesson here that applies well beyond physical recovery.
When something interrupts a plan, it’s tempting to measure yourself only against the original timeline. That can make every adjustment feel like failure. A better question is: Given what I know today, what can I keep doing, and what needs to change?
For me, that means continuing the shoulder work while giving the knee the attention it needs. It means listening to the people helping me recover, paying attention to what my body is telling me, and finding ways to remain active that fit where I actually am. I don’t have to pretend I’m happy about the interruption. But I’m not using it as a reason to stop caring for myself.
The same thinking belongs in business. A difficult stretch may slow you down or require you to prioritize more carefully. It doesn’t take away your experience, your relationships, or your ability to contribute. You can be honest about a limitation and still take the next useful step.
Still Moving Forward
I suspect a lot of people my age know this particular frustration. You put in the work to get healthier, and then your body presents a fresh agenda. It can feel unfair, especially when you’ve been doing many of the right things.
I’m not going to tell you to be grateful for every setback… I’m certainly not there with this one. But I do want to remember that recovery and progress rarely arrive in the clean, uninterrupted sequence we’d prefer. Some of the work is building capacity. Some of it is learning how to adapt when that capacity is temporarily limited.
My shoulder is better than it was. My knee needs attention now. Both statements can be (and are!) true. So is this one: I still want to keep moving forward, in my health and in the work that matters to me. Today, that means being honest about the frustration, taking care of what’s in front of me, and refusing to let one difficult chapter define the whole story.
The only thing I can add is this: don't let difficulty define your whole story. It’s hard, believe me. But when I started More Than Quota, I wanted to write about the people behind the work and what they’re going through, not just the results we’re trying to produce. Right now, this particular person (me) is frustrated with his shoulder, concerned about his knee, and yet still determined to move forward. I don’t know exactly what that will look like next month. I do know that this difficult stretch is part of my story, not the whole thing.
