As freelancers, we wear a lot of hats. Some days, I feel like translation is the easy part of my job: the harder parts being my roles as an accountant, marketing director, customer relations manager, office ergonomics expert, and so on and so on, not to mention the rewarding but time-consuming gigs as a wife, mom, daughter, friend, chef and suboptimal housekeeper. Based on my own experiences and some ideas that I shared during a previous Speaking of Translation conference call, here are some tips. These range from quick-and-dirty to big-picture, so just bear with me as I jump around! And of course, feel free to add your own ideas too.
Prioritize what really matters to you
This involves accepting that you simply cannot do everything you want to do and remain sane, unless you only need 45 minutes of sleep a day. But you can make time for the things that are critical to your happiness and/or to the success of your business. For example, I find that when my e-mail inbox is backlogged, I feel panicky about work. So I make that task a priority, and I really try to end every weekday without pending items in my inbox. In my personal life, I know that if I don’t exercise for about an hour on most days, I start to, for lack of a better way to put it, go crazy. So even if that means doing a YouTube yoga video at 10 o’clock at night, I do it. In the same vein, no matter how busy my family is, we really try to cook a real dinner and eat together almost every night. Other things (see above reference to suboptimal housekeeping) might slide, but we try to maintain our family dinner routine. Also, I absolutely do not do all-nighters or really even work past 11 PM. I feel that this is important to my mental health and my family harmony, so I force myself to avoid really crazy deadlines that require this kind of work.
Create as much uninterrupted work time as you can
The reality of life in the 21st century is that our attention is constantly pulled in 127 different directions. And in order to produce good translations, you need some mental space and some time that is free of distractions. Here are a few of my strategies to carve out this time:
- Keep a running to-do list next to the computer. When, as seems to happen about every 12 seconds, a to-do item (“buy cat food;” “can I make electronic deposits into my retirement account?;” “did Southwest announce when they’re starting flights to Hawaii?”) pops into my head, I write the item down instead of interrupting what I’m doing to perform that task. Then, when I need a mental break, I go through a few to-do items at once. I try to do the same with phone calls: write the item down, then book the snow tires, the dentist and the furnace cleaner all at once.
- Avoid inbox alerts. “You’ve got mail” almost all of the time, and if you read it as it arrives, you’ll spend your entire day doing that. So, shut off the alerts and just check e-mail every so often. I say “every so often” because ideally, I’d like to check e-mail only a few times a day and answer it all at once. But realistically, clients sometimes need a quick answer right away, so I’d say I check e-mail about every 15-30 minutes.
- Find a time of day when you can catch up. For many people, this is the early morning. I’m getting my family out the door at that time, so although I don’t love it, I often work from about 9-10:30 at night. This slot has the added advantage that neither my US clients nor my European clients are normally at work at that time, so I can send e-mail without generating an immediate response that then requires another response from me.
Work on long-term projects in small, daily chunks
Here’s an illustrative example. I published the first edition of my book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator in 2006. On January 1, 2008, I shook my fist in the air and said “If I finish one long-term project this year, it’s the second edition of that darned book!” Who wants to guess the actual publication date? May, 2011 (no, really). Basically, I was waiting for a big chunk of uninterrupted work time, fantasizing that I would take a month and do nothing but work on the second edition. News flash: unless you’re independently wealthy and have no responsibilities to anyone but yourself and have someone who cooks your meals, cleans your house and does your laundry, that chunk of time is never coming. So after taking two years to accept that reality, I resolved at the beginning of 2010 that I would work on the second edition every single day, even if I only wrote one sentence. This sounds like overstating the obvious, but here it is: even if you work on a project for only 15 minutes a day, you will eventually finish it. But if you never work on it, you will never finish it. So stop waiting for that elusive block of time, and start working with the amount of time you have. This works for other goals too; I once did a training program to run a marathon, and the coach told us that we were never allowed to use the “not enough time” excuse to avoid training. His advice: “If you only have 5 minutes, do Burpees for 5 minutes and you’ll be ready to drop. If you only have 20 minutes, run sprint intervals for 20 minutes. Even these small amounts add up.”
Fit stuff in, within reason
I kind of hate the term “multi-tasking” because I like to give my attention to one task at a time. Also, I have ways in which I absolutely will not multi-task. For example I don’t talk on the phone while I’m driving, even with a hands-free device. But I do try to combine certain kinds of activities to save time. We don’t have a clothes dryer (more on that in a forthcoming freelance frugality update), so I often talk on the phone while I’m hanging laundry on the clothesline. I’ve learned that I can prep a batch of bread dough while my husband and daughter are eating breakfast and getting ready for work and school in the morning, then it can rise while I’m working. And sometimes, you can fit in extra work time in a way that works well for your family: now that my daughter has 30-45 minutes of homework per night, I make a habit of sitting with her at the dining room table while she’s working, and that’s when I work on my long-term writing projects.
Accept that your other options are worse
I admit it: there are times when I get tired of being highly effective. There are days that I wish I could just fluff off, hit the celebrity gossip websites and then go to a hot yoga class. But I try to focus on my other options: making less money, having less time to spend with my family, using after-school child care or being up until 2 in the morning to finish my deadlines. In that light, things seem pretty good!
Great post, Corinne!
For people who are not naturally well organized (and for all beginners), I would add one thing: keep track of how you spend your time, how long it takes to do something, how much time you spend on administrative tasks and other overheads (such as answering e-mails, taking care of your accounting, marketing yourself to prospects), how much you spend actually translating or doing other paid work, and how much time is actually wasted (browsing the Internet, etc.)
A great free online (and offline) tool for that helps tracking your time Toggl (www.toggl.com),
Thanks Riccardo! That is a great tip about time tracking, thanks so much!
Stop waiting for an uninterrupted block of time has to be one of the best piece of advice I’ve ever read.
Thanks for your comment; that piece of advice really helped me, so hopefully other people can benefit from it as well.
Hi Corinne! That’s a very useful post. I constantly have to remind myself about the same thing. We even have a joke that a person can eat an elephant (= work on a big and therefore scary task) if he/she cuts it in small pieces (= like you said, divide the large project in small daily chunks). Thanks also for admitting that you are not always productive. Sometimes I feel like a complete failure when I don’t finish the tasks planned for the day, and it feels so much better knowing that I am not alone here 🙂
Thanks Olga! No, you’re definitely not alone there! I like the elephant analogy, thanks for your comment.
Thank you Corinne! Very important subject, especially this time of year. I wrote a similar post early on in my blog with some tools that block certain software and track how much time you spend on different tools or social media on the computer that I have found very useful. http://www.swedishtranslationservices.com/time-management-%E2%80%93-no-more-excuses-for-freelancers/
Thanks Tess! Those are excellent tools, thanks for the link!
Like you Corinne, I cannot concentrate on multiple tasks simultaneously. At the moment, I am juggling between assignments, lectures, having to prepare for looming exams in January, so not looking forward to Christmas except for the fact that there will be no lectures and practicing to become a freelancer to pay for my MA course. I do not know about breaking down tasks though, but it might be the only solution for writing a book or setting yourself targets. Good article though
Thanks, Josephine! Great to hear from another non-multitasker. Best of luck with your exams!
Great post Corinne, I think we all suffer from the same!! Real good tips here, thank you!
Thanks Lidia, glad it was helpful!
Excellent tips Corinne! I would add make relaxing and reading not work-related content a daily priority. It took me a few years to realize this, but when I am translating my mind is on “translation mode” and I don’t think much other than how to convey meanings. However, when I am reading as a hobby, I actually end up paying attention to structure, to different ways of conveying the same thing and etc. (I know, nerd!), which then really helps me in my translation work, i.e. when I am on automatic “translation mode”. What I mean is when our mind is not working, but open to learning we become better and more effective translators. I hope this makes sense.
Thanks, Karen! That is a great reminder about remembering to recharge, so that you feel energized when you get back to work! Thanks for your comment.
I found it interesting that your mind is paying attention to structures as you read. As a trainee translator, I unfortunately do not seem to do this automatically yet. However, I do know what you mean. When I worked using shorthand regularly, I would find myself watching tv and ‘writing’ the dialogues down in shorthand on the back of my hand with the finger of the other hand. Has anyone got any ideas of how a translator can train him/herself to pay attention to structures more?
Hi Tracy, I think the more you get into it, the more you think about it and put your heart to work the more it becomes automatic. Today, for example, I received my weekly expression in English from phrase finder http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/thats-all-she-wrote.html and it actually mentioned the use of “Dear John” in the U.S. military. Just the other day I watched the film “Dear John” and the ambiguity in its title has just become clear to me. I was so excited (I am even writing about it here!). Do you see what I mean? It is about becoming passionate about it, I guess. I would suggest, as you are training, reading, researching and translating topics that you love. This will get you into the research and all and more interested. Good luck!
Excellent article Corinne! I have been lobbying for a person do offer a time-management seminar at one of the conferences. You would be great!
Thanks, David! Glad you liked it! I’m not sure I’m the authority on time management (if you only saw the piles of stuff in my office, waiting to be filed and shredded!) but we can definitely talk about it when proposal season starts.
I identify with your comment on clutter—staying on top of it saves time. If I have to hunt for stuff, it probably means I have too much of it and it’s time for a purge. Freeing up physical space (or computer space) seems to free up mental space!
Great post, thanks a lot, Corrine. Especially the bit about not waiting for a long, un-interrupted slot of time. May I add that a couple of years ago I moved to a GTD model (see David Allen’s “Getting things done”), combined with the fantastic TaskPaper tool (only on Mac – sorry Windows guys). This has made a real, tangible difference to me. (at the time, I had a massive backlog due to a rather stressful move from Ireland to Germany; it took a about year to clean up the backlog, but it has worked in the end).
Thanks Martin! I need to learn more about the GTD model, so thanks for that lead. Software tools for productivity could be a whole other post, so I may contact you again in the future about TaskPaper!
Thank you for this useful article, Corinne. I recently went freelance after a few years as an in-house translator so I’m used to working 9 to 5 and now have to adjust to having a great many more tasks while trying to still maintain a work/life balance.
Thanks, Sarah! I definitely agree: when I worked in-house, the fact that I couldn’t do laundry, do dishes, brush the cat, etc. during the work day was both a plus and a minus. Let us know if you have any tips to share with others!
While I still have a great deal to learn, I definitely think it’s easier to employ your time usefully as a freelancer. When working in-house I’d often have a rush in the evening to get everything done. Now, for example, I can start the washing machine first thing in the morning and then hang up the clothes later when I need a few minutes off.
I can get distracted when random thoughts pop into my head, so I’ll definitely be using your tip and keeping a notepad on my desk from now on to jot down all the little things that occur to me, rather than immediately interrupting my work to sort them out.
I love your post Corinne, so true to me as well!
Usually, I feel overwhelmed by soooo many tasks we have to tackle each day, mainly by this time of the year.
This reminds me of a saying I keep on repeating myself: “Nothing takes longer than what never gets started”
Thanks for sharing! Happy Holidays!
Thanks, Dolores! That is a great saying…so true!
Thank you very much for your excellent tips, Corinne. Considering daily chunks when working on long-term projects: I forgot who (a writer, I forgot the name) had a habit of interrupting his work short before bringing it to the very end (that is, the end for the day). Next day, when he resumed, he would already have a nice start from where he stopped himself to save something, anticipatorily, for the next time. I always found it a useful trick for a smooth transition. Stop before completing, save something to resume from where you leave off.