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Dogs, freelance translator, Freelancer, Holidays, Night owl, People, relaxation, self-employed, self-employment, Time off, work-life balance, Workaholic, working from home, Working hours, Working weekends
The self-employed are notorious for their workaholic tendencies. I have to admit that my ex-father-in-law once asked me if I ever stopped! Not just working, I hasten to add, but cooking, gardening, …. I admit that I like to be busy! And yes, when it’s all down to you, and you love your job to boot, there is a temptation to work all hours. Work can be a godsend too: when I was going through a traumatic divorce, it was a huge relief to throw myself into the challenge of a tricky translation and take my mind off things.
Yet am I really a workaholic? I do often find myself working in the evenings, true, but that’s usually because I’ve taken time off during the day to do something else. With two bouncy dogs, I’m committed to two decent walks a day – actually a lifesaver for the deskbound translator to counteract our otherwise fairly sedentary working practices. I also do various sporting activities most evenings, from the equally essential yoga and dance, to the more sociable badminton and tennis. So it’s not really a hardship if I end up fitting in a little more work at the end of the evening, usually after a late dinner and my fix of the latest episode of Masterchef… The fact that I live alone probably doesn’t help; there’s no-one to persuade me otherwise and getting ahead is always a satisfying feeling, even if the only reason to get ahead is so that you can squeeze in the inevitable small jobs for favourite clients that crop up during the day!
One of the joys of working for yourself is precisely that you can pick and choose your hours. And while in practice it may seem to outsiders that we work all hours, it actually allows you to concentrate your efforts when it suits you. I remember hearing an excellent presentation by Konstantin Kisin at the ProZ conference in Rome many moons ago, in which he explained how it was so much more efficient to really concentrate in short, sustained bursts, freeing up more time to do other things. It’s entirely up to each of us when those bursts take place, however. I find I can concentrate more in the evenings with no interruptions – and it suits my night owl nature – so that works for me. If I’ve had one of those days where the ‘phone hasn’t stopped ringing and I’ve been fielding inquiry after inquiry, it can be a blessing to know I can sit down with my trusty Dragon in the evening and get through a substantial part of my daily quota.
Similarly, when it comes to meeting up with friends, it’s good to know you can take time out during the day, but only if you schedule it first! Friends and relatives dropping by unexpectedly are likely to get short shrift from me, but if they give me notice, it’s not a problem. After all, if we were working in an office we couldn’t take an afternoon off at the drop of a hat… Being unavailable at short notice does NOT mean we’re workaholics, just that we lead busy lives with tight deadlines! It still feels very much a guilty pleasure when you sneak off with a friend you haven’t seen for ages for an extended weekday lunch, but it’s so good for us – and one of the perks of freelancing!
One area I try not to compromise on is working at weekends. Again, living alone it would be all too easy to slip into the trap of working on Saturday and Sunday too. I firmly believe that I work so much better if I’ve had a break, though, so I rarely work weekends, preferring to catch up with the garden, allotment and social and family life. Even on recent bank holiday weekends, when I had thought I might work at least one of the days, I managed to refrain – and felt much more refreshed returning to work afterwards. I might occasionally do a final read-through of a translation on a Sunday evening and I would certainly be driven to the computer by a weekend of non-stop rain and no family at home, but in general, I like to keep the weekends sacrosanct. I suspect I may be the exception rather than the rule here, judging from the number of colleagues posting on translation forums on social media at the weekend – but each to their own! The beauty is that we have the choice.
Holidays too are precisely that. Whilst I might keep an eye on e-mails while away, I certainly don’t take my laptop with me and my only contribution to work in my designated time out is to reply to anything urgent that may come in and offer a date on my return or suggest a colleague in my stead. That’s just good customer relations. Plus, having notified clients that I’m away, it usually isn’t onerous and keeping on top of e-mails means you have less rubbish to sift through on your return.
So, workaholic? Me? Never! How about you?
- Thanks as ever to Mox for the pertinent cartoon: http://mox.ingenierotraductor.com/2011/04/sleep-deprivation-symptoms.html
I’m pleased to report that I’ve never worked all night on a translation, although I confess to a few late sessions working into the early hours….
ClaireCoxTranslations 
I took my son back to Ireland last Christmas so we could spend a couple of weeks with my parents and my wife could have a bit of time on her own. Unfortunately, we had a large project starting up over Christmas that required my attention as a reviewer. Nobody else was available and the client was nervous because their previous supplier was producing work their client was not happy with. I’m happy to report they won the account because of the work we did over Christmas and it is now one of our biggest accounts.
Before I left my parents house they staged what can only be referred to as an ‘intervention’ because they believed I was working too hard. The irony is that they only ever took about two weeks holiday per year when I was growing up as they were self-employed.
The flip side of that is that I took two weeks in South East Asia in Feb. learning to dive paid for by the project where I only worked two hours every two days to keep on top of e-mail (ok, I did have my laptop with me). I travelled with a musician friend from school who is also on his own clock. Running a translation agency can be stressful when you are squeezed between competing interests and I’m still trying to figure out the whole work-life balance thing but I do think if you are smart about it you can work in this business and still take time to smell the roses.
Thanks, John – interesting. I think that’s exactly it. It is entirely possible to work all the hours there are, but if we’re sensible we are ideally placed to give ourselves some time out – but we often have to be disciplined about it. Interesting too that your parents criticised your work ethos, yet you’d obviously inherited it from them!
Hi Claire!
Great post (as always)! I must admit I’m quite of a workaholic myself, and I do work weekends, BUT I love meeting with friends, taking vacations, and traveling as well. The secret lies in balancing things out I guess; I’ll need to work on this 😉
Cannot wait to read more from you!
Nora
Thanks Nora – that’s so sweet of you. Definitely all comes down to balance. I need my weekends off, but if it suits you to work through and then take more time off in chunks, that must work for you 🙂
Firstly, Claire, please let me compliment you on that lovely photo of your gorgeous dogs in the beautiful countryside! I don’t have a dog, but I think they can be a good source of discipline, forcing you to take time off.
Back to the article… I’m a bit like you. I prefer to work in short bursts at sometimes unusual times of the day. However, those bursts can be more prolonged if a client has an ongoing, urgent project…
I’ve also been bad at taking holidays, because I felt like I always had to be partly available. I have always had my long working holidays to the UK, though, which have sort of helped. I took my first proper holiday the other week, though, for one week, and it was great. My clients were all very understanding, too – one even kindly decided to be ill for a week and a half at the same time, meaning projects were delayed while I had a break! (I take that as a sign from the almighty, but it wasn’t really fair on that poor client…)
It’s all about balance, really. I got very overworked earlier this year, and it led to insomnia, which of course led to other serious symptoms (staph infection, tummy upset, eczema, dermographic urticaria, hayfever, etc…!). I’m recovering, and a break at my parents’ with my mum looking after me really helped. However, it showed me I really do need to make some changes – taking better care of my mind and body, relaxing more, and not stressing out so much over things that don’t matter. So, I’ll be taking more frequent breaks to the UK, as well as holidays with loved ones and general time out.
My husband is also a workaholic by nature, and gets stressed out when not everything can be done in the time allowed. His work’s been a bit more stressful lately, so we’ve cut down his hours to just 15 hours, and the rest of the time he is supporting me – either checking my German in emails, helping with some website updates, or – most importantly – ensuring I’m fed and take regular breaks. It works out more efficient all round if he has more time to do some of the household chores and I have more time for my translation and copywriting. He’s also filling the role of your dogs in the sense of healthy social distraction, I suspect!
Oh, and I followed the advice of someone in Standing Up a while ago and got myself a Bullet Diary. That was a great decision – I use a separate code for paid jobs that have been completed (tasks are a dot, and paid jobs get a triangle around them when completed), and then once it’s been billed, I can see that at a glance (I fill the triangle in). It’s really helping me to keep track of projects better and feel less overwhelmed.
And for serious anxiety and insomnia, I found valerian tincture and walking help a lot.
Thanks Rose, for your in-depth comments, and sorry to take so long to approve your comment – it had gone into spam for some reason, which it clearly isn’t. Thank you for commenting again on Standing Up to draw it to my attention! Sorry to hear you haven’t been well and you’re quite right, working all hours definitely isn’t good for us mentally or physically, no matter how much we enjoy what we do.
I can’t take any credit for this particular dog picture as my son took it, but, living alone, the dogs are both my release and my alarm clock to remind me to take regular breaks and walks in the fresh air; can’t resist that soft head nudging my knees as I battle to finish a tricky sentence, or those melting brown eyes willing me to down tools and take them out…
Ironically, one member of my family told me I don’t work hard enough (she doesn’t really understand what I do, and can’t grasp the fact that I only write so many words in a day!)
I can’t remember the last time I worked on a weekend. A couple of years ago I was taking on far too much and making myself ill – I hadn’t been freelance that long and had recently started living on my own again, so clearly I hadn’t figured out the balance yet. I then decided that I would only work weekends if desperate or if something came up that I couldn’t resist (like a book chapter that had to be done at short notice).
That’s the beauty of freelancing – if you don’t want to work 9 to 5, you don’t have to!
That’s good to hear, Sarah – and you look as though you’ve got the holiday side of things sorted too, judging from your FB globetrotting. The joy of our freelance lifestyle is precisely that we can work any time, anywhere – and anyone who dares complain about the lack or excess of work we do really doesn’t understand 🙂
I tend to work evenings too – *and* weekends, but I’ve always taken plenty of time off during the day. And my actual working time is incredibly small; for example for May so far I’ve done 32 hours actual translation. Even if you assume double that again for admin, which is a huge over-estimation, I’m still only doing something like 4 hours’ work a day, for a salary that’s well in excess of anything I’ve ever earned for a “real” job.
The problem for me came during the winter when I was also attempting to renovate – which involves not only the actual physical work but also sorting out services and artisans and sourcing and buying materials. And thinking about all of those things. In other words, no time off, ever. And this coincided with an enormous translation workload for projects that I’d committed to in advance and which all turned up at the same time.
Suddenly I was doing a working day of more like 12 or 15 hours, and even though that stopped 6 weeks ago I’m still utterly exhausted. What’s worse is that I’m finding it hard to motivate myself to deal with my *normal* workload. Fortunately I’ve got some really interesting projects under way and in the pipeline, plus the whole summer to recover, with plenty of relaxing on the agenda. But I won’t be taking that particular approach again.
That sounds like a lot of hard work, Jane! I hope the house is getting there now and worth all the effort? Hard to know what to do in such situations, if you need to carry on working to pay the bills….