Here’s a time management strategy that, at first glance, doesn’t seem like a time management strategy. Make sure that you set your translation rates so that you have enough time for non-billable work. If you’re looking for the sound-bite version of this concept, you can stop reading! Otherwise:
This came to me while I was prepping for the work-life balance panel that my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux moderated at last year’s ATA conference in Chicago. I do a lot of work-related things that are not billable: of course marketing, accounting, billing and other administrative work, but I also spend a lot of time on work for the ATA Board, writing this blog, working on books and articles, presenting webinars, participating in professional development training and so on. Other translators ask me about this a lot. “Do you ever actually translate?” “Does your family know what you look like?” “Do you sleep three hours a night?” The answers to those questions are Yes, Yes, and No (I sleep almost as much as our cat does!) so here’s the trick.
I set my translation rates so that I can earn my target income if I am *actually translating* 20 hours a week. I’m a pretty fast translator, so I usually estimate that I can produce 500 finished words per hour including proofreading. I like to be able to take six weeks of vacation per year. So I look at my total output: say 20 hours times 500 words times 46 weeks=460,000 words. Then I take my target income, divide it by 460,000, and that tells me the average rate I need to charge in order to reach my target income. Then, and this is very important, *I do enough marketing that I have enough work at that rate, essentially all the time.* It’s definitely one of those “sounds simple, gets more complex when you try to do it” concepts, but I do think that at least having that calculation in your head is helpful. If you’re working for rates such that you have to translate 40 hours a week to reach your target income, either you’re going to end up working 60 or 70 hours a week and probably burning out, or you’re going to end up letting the non-billable work slide. No marketing, no training, no networking, equals a business that is potentially dying and at the least becoming stagnant. So, don’t do that. Step one: figure out what rate you need to charge in order to have enough time for non-billable work. Step two: market as assertively as you need to in order to fill your inbox with work at that rate.
Hi Corinne, Many thanks for this brilliant post! I came to realise the importance of basing rate calculations on billable time only just a month or so ago based on something Marta Stelmaszak said, reinforced by a presentation at an SFT meeting. I’m now in the process of putting it into practice!
Thanks Caroline! Great, glad it was helpful!
I’ve always been impressed by how much time and effort you seem to put into marketing, now I know how you do it!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Catherine! I mean, it’s not for everyone. But I do think that for me, one way that I have developed a good business niche doing things like teaching and consulting is by putting time into the “extra” stuff- blogging, volunteering, writing, etc.
This is a very good point, Corinne, thanks for the reminder. I was also thinking about this today, and wondering whether to base my calculations on 25 or 30 billable hours per week. That seems very low, but 40 billable hours per week is definitely unrealistic for freelance translators/business owners who want to pass the “Does your family know what you look like?” test!
Thanks Jayne! Yes, I agree: I am for 20 billable hours because I don’t like to work more than about 35 hours a week (what can I say, I’m a Coloradoan who’s spent a lot of time in France…). But even if you are OK working, say, 50 hours a week, then I’d do 35 billable hours.
Thanks Corinne! This was very helpful. I think it’s very important for us freelancers to be able to justify our rates, not only to other people but also to ourselves. We tend to forget how important non-billable work is. Quantifying your target income can also be very important (depending on your personal situation, especially if you are the only wage-earner) so it can really be worth taking the time to see how much you need to earn, remembering not just monthly costs like rent, bills, food and clothes but also major one-off expenses like Christmas and a well-earned holiday!
Thanks Julia! Yes, very true: I think that for most people, you need to earn more as a freelancer than you think you do. For example I know that I went through a phase after about 5 years of freelancing where I said, “This is great, but if I want this to be my ‘forever’ job, I need a similar level of financial security to someone with a salaried job,” and that’s when I came to the billable hour realization.
This is exactly the problem I’ve faced since starting out on my own about a year ago – working too much and starting to feel burned out. It’s nice to see the calculation for determining how many billable hours to work – and how many weeks of vacation you can take if you do things the right way. Six weeks sounds amazing! Thanks as always for your insights, Corinne.
Thanks Jim! This is definitely one of those “sounds simple: gets harder when you try to implement it” things, so don’t feel that you have to do it all at once. Also, because I work for mostly direct clients, the 20 hour figure works. But you have to customize that to your own clients and your financial needs. In general though, I think that if you’re actually *translating* 40 or 40+ hours per week, it’s too much, because either you burn out or your have no time to work on the other aspects of your business.
Not to mention the danger of repetitive stress injuries, eye strain, and other potential medical complications…
Nice post. Because I do a great deal of editing paid by the hour or jobs based on a flat rate, I have to use hourly target or typical income – not a per word-based calculation.
I use an average of 30 billable hours mentally, for what it’s worth, but my workload is very uneven. I like it that way, as a rule. I can’t keep 40 billable hours up for weeks at a time but I like taking occasional very big jobs that pay well, and I am thankful for quieter weeks where I can change pace and focus.
Thanks Karen! Good point about the billable hours; thinking about that is better if you do mostly hourly or flat-rate jobs.