Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!
Here’s a quick but hopefully useful tip, because we all find ourselves in this situation… When there’s a task that you’re truly dreading, try a productivity ritual to get it done.
It’s amazing how much you can get done when you just *focus on one thing* for a set period of time. But that’s weirdly hard to do in our modern work environment. My solution: the productivity ritual.
Case in point: For a couple of weeks, I had been putting off an administrative task that I estimated would take four hours. “I don’t have four hours! So I just won’t work on it at all!” Illogical, I know, but that’s where I was stuck.
I decided to just attack it, using my personal productivity ritual:
🛑Physically flipping my phone over. I find that even if I silence the notifications, I still look at the screen, so I turn the phone face-down
🛑Shutting off all notifications on my computer (I use the web version of WhatsApp, so it still pings even if my phone is silenced)
🛑Silently acknowledging that the world can keep spinning without me for an hour
🎶Putting on some productivity music. I use wordless background music (Jazz for Study, Lofi Girl), but yours might be something totally different. If AC/DC works for you, listen to that.
You can guess the ending. After an hour, I had completely polished off the “four-hour” task, and I was relieved of both the task itself, and the mental burden of worrying about the task. If you’re struggling to complete an unpleasant task, try even a 15 or 20-minute productivity burst.
The key here is that the ritual has to be something special. If you wear your noise-canceling headphones all the time, you can’t simply put them on and tell yourself, “But THIS time I’m going to be productive!” You need to save your ritual for those tasks you truly dread and avoid; it also helps to impose a time limit, and reward yourself at the end. In my case, I told myself that I would work on the dreaded task for an hour, then go get a mocha at my favorite coffee shop. Done! It’s off the to-do list!
Let me know how this works if you try it!
To get our weekly posts directly in your inbox, sign up for the Training for Translators mailing list!
I like the idea of a ritual, for me it could be cutting myself from the noise in the house by putting on my noise cancelling headphone, and you could also add a meditation movement such as hands in prayers to get the necessary focus to get started on that dreaded task. I think it’s also really useful to do it in the morning, so your mind can be as clear and strong as possible. Finally, while it’s so true the task might take much less time (just happened to me on Sunday, i thought finishing my business taxes might take another 2 hours and it ended being done in 20 minutes, lucky me!), you really DO need to have a minimum of courage, or rest, or motivation to confront it 😀
Yes, you’re so right about all of that!! Sometimes the key to the task taking less time is being prepared to confront it!!