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Client-relations, customer relations, freelance, freelance translator, Freelancer, self-employed, Translation, work-life balance, working from home, working practices
One of the much vaunted advantages of working freelance is that you are supposed to have the flexibility to choose your own working hours. But does it work in reality? Well… in a manner of speaking…
Certainly, as a freelancer, you can decide how, when and where you want to work – but there’s the small matter of making sure you’re accessible to clients when they need you. When I started out as a freelance translator over 25 years ago, I only worked part-time, and indeed continued to do so until my boys were well into their secondary school education. I loved the flexibility of working when it suited me (or more likely, when the children were otherwise engaged/asleep/at school!) and the few clients I had in the early years were well aware of my situation so the flexible hours were a positive boon. I also loved the fact that, if push came to shove, I could catch up in the evening or at the weekend when my then husband was able to take over the childcare. However, my priority was always the children and with another breadwinner in the house, the money I earned, though extremely useful, was always the icing on the cake.
Yet once I was working full-time and, post-divorce, the sole breadwinner, I realised that all the flexible hours I’d enjoyed as a part-time mum / part-time translator were no longer practical if I wanted to be regarded as a serious professional. Clients expect you to be there in normal office hours, i.e. 9 ‘til 5 in the UK. One by one, my regular daytime activities of dance, tennis and yoga have fallen by the wayside, as leaving the office for a regular class week in, week out, was counter-productive and frustrating for clients. (I hasten to add that I’ve moved to evening pursuits instead – time for yourself is sacrosanct in my book!) By the time I’d driven to a class, enjoyed an hour and a half of whatever activity it was, driven home, showered and walked the dogs, I used to find that the whole morning had gone and inevitably that was the time that clients had called/e-mailed/faxed with urgent jobs – and subsequently gone elsewhere….
In theory, yes, we can all be accessible wherever we are nowadays with the advent of smart phones, but in practice are you really going to check your e-mail in the middle of a tennis match or a particularly strenuous yoga routine (and why would you want to anyway? The whole point of doing sport is to relax and NOT think about work!)? I also have the added inconvenience that I live out in the sticks (if 50 miles from London classes as such!) and mobile reception round here is intermittent to say the least. On a number of occasions recently I’ve been walking the dogs, only to realise that I’ve received an e-mail offering a juicy piece of work, but was then unable to reply as I no longer had signal. On arriving home 30 minutes later, the job had gone to someone else because I hadn’t responded fast enough, which is extremely frustrating. To be fair, most of my clients know that I have dogs and do normally wait up to an hour to give me chance to reply, but this one obviously couldn’t wait. Unfortunately dog-walking is a non-negotiable part of my working day, but I’m rarely out for more than an hour and that is definitely part of my particular flexible package.
That’s not to say I don’t take time off as and when it suits me. If I’m going to be out of the office for a whole day or more, I always try and let clients know, so they don’t call in vain. Again, these days, you can usually pick up e-mails even if you’re away from the office, but it seems only courteous to let customers know. I also try not to work at weekends, but the beauty of our freelance existence is that you can decide to catch up at weekends if you really need to – or even if a particularly damp, dark weekend beckons at this time of year and you’d actually rather be working than doing anything else!
I suppose, in an ideal world, as a translator catering for the European market, I should really get up an hour earlier so I could be accessible to foreign clients working an hour ahead. Being a night owl, however, that really isn’t going to happen and sometimes you just have to work with your strengths! My European clients are fully aware that they are unlikely to get a response from me until 9 o’clock in the morning. At the other end of the spectrum, living alone and loving my job means that I am often to be found working into the early hours if I want to get ahead with whatever I’m working on – and this can be advantageous if you work with clients or colleagues in very different time zones. It’s also a great time to work in the knowledge that you are unlikely to be interrupted – or distracted by pressing jobs in the garden or a lovely sunny day (hard though that might be to imagine in these gloomy December days…).
So yes, in theory, it is up to us when we work, but if you want to maximise your potential, you have to cater to the best times to suit your clients too – and to make the most of your own most productive times, of course. I’d love to hear others’ views too – perhaps you have managed to squeeze your working day into a few hours, or just work as and when it suits? Each to their own, I suppose.
ClaireCoxTranslations 
Oh the joys of knowing you’ve received an email and then not being able to reply due to lack of signal. I’ve been there far too often. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, my clients are very patient with me as I’m often not there. I’d love to work when I feel like it and not have a huge chunk taken out of my day in the afternoons, but with kids it’s just not possible.
I know, you’d think if you can get full signal on a far-flung beach in Crete, as I could on holiday this year, you could get one 50 miles from our capital city. But evidently not! And yes, my clients are usually very forbearing too, so it’s doubly annoying when someone isn’t prepared to wait, especially if it’s something you’d really like to do! And as for working around children, only time resolves that, I’m afraid – I’ve been there and gradually been able to work up to full time. But do make the most of them when they’re around, because you’ll definitely miss them when they’ve flown the nest…. Then you just have dogs pressurising you to down tools and take them out!
I think there are two issues here: working hours and availability. Working hours are no problem at all to move around, because your customers normally don’t care when you work, as long as you meet the deadline. They do want you to be available, though. When my son was a baby and I was sharing care of him with my wife, she used to work mornings and I worked afternoons into the early evening. But I was also available, because I had my laptop on most of the time so I could respond to e-mails and so on. The smartphone has made that even easier and I have occasionally been “working” (i.e. available) as far as my customers are concerned while in fact enjoying a couple of days away. I feel quite free. Now I work more standard hours, although recently I’ve started going for a swim first thing in the morning three days a week, and customers have hardly noticed. I take the holidays I want and I rarely work weekends. I do work some evenings, though, if I need to catch up, and I choose to work some bank holidays, usually so I can justify having a day off another time. But all that requires a certain amount of determination: you can’t get away from the fact that what really sets the boundaries of your freedom as a freelance is your ability to say “no”.
You have to set limits on the expectations of “availability”. I have experienced a number of low attention span PMs who panic when something is urgent and I am away from the desk for 10 minutes to feed chickens or make coffee. When I call back latter and hear their sputtered explanations of why they had to find someone else in those terrible ten minutes, I remind them that I have a telephone and that dialing takes but a few seconds in an “emergency”. This seems to be a novel concept for some of the younger ones. Maybe I should suggest texting like they probably do all day anyway.
Yes, it always amazes me that they don’t just pick up the phone when something really is urgent! The one I missed recently while on one of my daily dog walks and in one of the many reception black spots in my neck of the woods, was actually for the middle of the following week, so hardly urgent. However, I did find myself returning a very short translation by text earlier this week when my client’s internet was down – that was definitely a first!
You do have to set limits to your ‘availability’. It all depends on your relationship with your clients. Some clients have expectations and if you give them an inch they will take a mile. I believe in preserving family life and not having to jump to a ‘bing’ on my phone to say I’ve an email. I also believe that I am the one that dictates how I work and not the client. When you have a full-time business, it is difficult to stop sometimes and over time this can wear you down and sap your energy. I have found that setting regular hours and only adapting to clients on rare occasions gives me a chance to switch off. This is all important if I am going to work well the next day.
Frankly, if you are a busy translator this independence thing is a bit of a myth.Of course, you can work in different places (taking kids sports or cultural activities), but they are not always ideal and rarely as good as working in a proper working environment.
I am new to this freelance thing and have quickly discovered that the idea of flexible hours is a bit of a play on words. I think most people think that if you have flexible hours, that you work less! Not so, in my opinion. It just means you have to juggle more and end up working odd hours. Like many have said, it’s all about availability. And I spend too much time being available! It’s a situation that I continue to work on. Good to know that others struggle with similar situations!
“Flexibility” and “Availability” will also depend on the Freelancers personal life. Some of the younger freelancers have the exact flexibility that people dream of. Sleeping in late then working a couple hours than out partying. The missing equation between how “available” you really are is….you guessed it…kids. The difference of being flexible when raising a family or not is astronomical! Great post.
Thanks for sharing.
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