Here at Thoughts on Translation, I’ve been working on a loosely organized series of posts inspired by summer. A few weeks ago I wrote about ways to handle summer as a freelancing mom or dad; now let’s talk about the importance of down time in our freelance lives.
In the not-so-distant past (I’m 38 and I can remember this), we didn’t really have to schedule or even think about down time because there were many fewer technological intrusions into our lives. For example, I was in high school when my family first purchased an answering machine and in college before I ever used e-mail. I even remember going to visit family friends in Canada who still had party line telephone service in the 1980s.
With all of our 21st century opportunities to be working/on call/plugged in at all times, it’s important to think about the importance of down time and how to schedule it so that our businesses remain viable but we don’t burn out. Here are a few suggestions, and feel free to add your own!
- Allow yourself to exclude certain types of technology from your life. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that I just don’t want a smartphone, largely because the boundaries between my personal and work life are already so blurred. I respect (and even agree with) the reasons that people have and love smartphones, but I’m sticking with my prepaid cell phone that just makes phone calls.
- Schedule down time in various increments. For example, I think that most people need at least an hour of mental down time a day. In fact, I think that an unplugged hour can actually increase a freelancer’s productivity. Likewise, I think that one fully unplugged day a week is really beneficial. Here’s an interesting New York Times article on the concept of a “secular Sabbath,” in which the writer unplugs completely for one day a week; and if a die-hard New Yorker can do it, I bet you can too!
- If you can manage it financially, take at least one week of unplugged vacation time each year. For example, we took a family camping trip for a week at the beginning of this summer, and I made a deliberate decision not to take a laptop and to only turn my cell phone on once a day to check my work voice mail. In past years, I’ve gone as long as two weeks without checking e-mail at all. If you’re going to do this, I think it’s important to accept that there will be some opportunity cost; clients are not going to wait two weeks to hear back about their rush project. However, I find that this time to focus completely on my family is so valuable that it’s worth the loss of income.
- Spend at least some of your down time doing simple activities that you enjoy. It’s debatable whether down time is good for you if you spend the whole time trying not to think about who you want to be calling or texting or who might have e-mailed you. Instead, let yourself enjoy the kinds of activities that people did before the advent of high-speed Internet. Grow some of your own food; bike or walk somewhere that you would normally drive; sleep late or go to bed early; write a real paper letter to someone you care about; read magazines at the library for a couple of hours; find a nice patch of grass and just lie on it and look at the sky!
I really love the point that this article makes (it’s from the journal Science). The author, Irene Levine, closes by saying “Consider how many of your most creative thoughts occur not in front of a computer screen or at the bench but while you are showering, golfing, lying in bed, or taking a jog in the park?” Don’t you think she’s right? So this summer, make sure that you get some time away from work so that you can start the fall feeling rested and recharged!
You are so right about this one, Corinne. Constant availability and ubiquitous technology are corrosive to the soul in ways we seldom realize until the damage is far advanced. I have a very heavy technological bias in my approach to our profession, and that is necessary due to the types of projects I do in order to achieve the volumes and rates I want, but for balance I find it increasingly necessary to throttle the intrusion of technology in my life.
E-mail is read only when I feel I have time for it. My cell phone is the simplest model I can find and utterly disposable. I find it still has far more features than I want. I don’t program my VCR (do we still have those?) – instead I ditched the TV and everything associated with it and find that I don’t miss it one bit. Even radio is more input than I care to deal with in many instances.
And I’m rediscovering the pleasures of writing on paper again. Even translating that way on occasion before I transcribe back onto the computer. There are interesting differences in the results.
And despite considerable debate in my household on the subject, I find that hours alone in the quiet of the fields and forests working with my dog or hunting gives me a much-needed tonic for the stress of sitting in a chair behind a screen listening to ringing telephones for most of the day. The fast lane is an exciting place, but if you examine it closely you’ll notice a lot of road kill.
Kevin, promise me that someday you’ll write a book? Just the phrase “corrosive to the soul” made my day! That’s also really interesting about writing on paper; you should blog about that!
Hi,
It’s always great to read a thoughtful post on ways we freelancers can realisitcally renew ourselves and not live as if on-call all the time.
I take a day off from work every week – neither my husband or I work on Sundays so that the whole family gets a break form the norm.
We don’t completely unplug – we might check email and write to friends or shop online or the like, but we don’t do any work – either paid or the office tidying variety. So ‘first thing on Monday’ deadlines mean ‘Saturday evening’ to me.
I don’t have a smart phone either. That’s another way I switch off. I’m holding out until my children are old enough to be texting me and out and about on their own.
One day at a time is all I can comfortably manage though. 🙂
I have had only one unplugged week’s vacation in recent years. I do set an automated reply though that says ‘not available until’ when I’m travelling so that I’m not tempted to accept a particularly good job when I get back to the laptop at the end of the day.
Hello all,
Well I’ll weigh in on this topic about technology (e.g., smartphones in particular) and the translation business. I started a translation business a few years ago called Affinity Spanish (http://www.affinityspanish.com) and a year or so ago I opened at new company for multi-lingual work (http://www.affinitytranslation.com).
When I got started with these companies I knew very little about translation or the translation business. My background’s in marketing and business. Needless to say I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the past 3.5 years in front of a computer screen promoting these companies. Since I’m online at my desktop computer much of the working day I’ve not invested in a smartphone until recently. I must say that having the ability to check email when I’m waiting to pick up my second grade daughter from school is actually quite nice. I no longer worry about what I’m missing and can spend time away from the office without concern that I’m disadvantaging my daughter’s financial future. So my stress level is lower.
So many times the difference between securing a project and losing it is in the responsiveness to the client. Sending or reviewing an email here or there remotely doesn’t distract unduly with my daughter when we’re on the playground and she’s occupied with something else. I’m still there with her and I’m not worried about catching up later on all the communication that’s stacked up. For me so far, the new smartphone gadget has added to my quality of life (not ‘corrosive’ at all).
Best regards,
Ron