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tranfree issue 19 - 3rd October 2000
Like Sands Through The Hourglass.
...So Are the Minutes of a Translator's Time:
Time Management Tips for the Freelance Translator
By Mary Maloof
Part II: The Other Weapons In Your Time Management Arsenal and How To Use Them Wisely
As I've explained in Part I, it's crucial to impose some sort of
structure on our workday. In Part II, I will explain the benefits of imposing a structure on other important elements...
- Your In Box & Your Desk
- Your Answering Machine
- Your E-mail Mailbox
- Your To-Do List
Just as time, if left unstructured, will most certainly come back
to bite you, an unstructured in box, e-mail mailbox and to-do
list, as well as an out-of-control telephone and unorganized
desk, can really make your workday miserable and slash your
productivity.
1. Your In Box, Your Desk, and the "Quick Decision Rule"
Your In box should actually be FOUR In boxes, categorized
according to the urgency of the task and tiered so as to save
desk space. Buy four stackable plastic In boxes from your local
office supplies store, and make a prominent label for each of the
boxes...
- Urgent or High Priority
- Hold
- Low Priority
- File
The "Urgent" box is where you keep your current translation work
and any other tasks with a solid deadline that absolutely must
get done in the next several days. Put this box at the very top
of the tier.
The "Hold" box is where you keep items that cannot get done until
you communicate with another person. It's helpful to keep these
in a separate box so that you can locate the item quickly and
easily to refer to it when the person calls or e-mails you back.
You know how...
...annoying it can be for you - as well as the person
you're on the phone with - to have to frantically scrounge around
in piles of documents to locate the one little thing that the
person is talking about. Having a "Hold" box eliminates this
time-wasting irritation altogether.
The "Hold" box is also a good place to keep that article you
intend to give that translator friend of yours who is coming over
tomorrow, or the book you plan on lending your colleague. The
idea is to keep these things in a separate place so you won't
have to waste time looking for them later.
The "Low Priority" box is filled with things you would like to
get done soon, but which are not urgent and which do not have a
deadline.
Finally, the "File" box is for tasks that you have done which
need to be filed in the appropriate place.
In handling incoming tasks, I always apply the "Quick Decision
Rule," which is simply this...
- Take a few seconds to look at it and make a quick decision on
whether it's urgent, to be held for someone else, low priority,
or to be filed away.
If it is something that can be done within five minutes, then do
it immediately and get it over with and into the File box - don't
leave it sitting on your desk, under any circumstances.
If it's not something that can be done within five minutes, stick
it immediately in one of the three other boxes and get back to
whatever you were doing before. The bottom line is, whatever the
incoming task may be, figure out when you need to do it RIGHT
NOW, and get it OFF your desk, RIGHT NOW.
Your desk should be reserved ONLY for the task that you are doing
right at that very moment, and no other papers should clutter it.
If you have other papers on your desk, this could potentially
distract your focus and energies elsewhere and decrease your
productivity, and you must conserve your energies, not diffuse
them.
It's a good idea to clear off your desk periodically throughout
the day and give it one final clearing at the end of each day.
This psychologically and literally "clears the work energy" for
the next day. You feel much better about your business and your
capabilities, and you are far less likely to feel overwhelmed or
lose your focus when your desk is clean and neat.
Alex's Comment...
Mary's right about that! I've had my head buried in my next book
for the last few months. I just took a week off to do the
accounts and clear my desk.
I hated going into my office because there were piles of paper
everywhere, I felt overwhelmed and stressed. It's really much
better if you can stay on top of it.
If you hate going in your office you're not going to have the
enthusiasm you need for your work. 
2. Your Answering Machine
Because most freelance translators don't have a receptionist,
they must deal with quite a few more extraneous phone calls than
in-house translators.
A lot of these calls can be extremely annoying, not to mention
time-wasting.
- "No, I can't donate any money to Starving War Veterans because
I am a Starving Translator."
- "No, I don't want to buy 1,000 coffee cups with my logo on
them at the low, low price of USD$3.00 apiece."
- "No, I am not interested in a web site because I already have
one and I bet mine is a heck of a lot cooler and more useful
than yours."
- "No, I don't want to sit on my butt wasting fifteen minutes of
my precious time on the phone with you to participate in your
stupid marketing survey UNLESS YOU PAY ME!"
If you're a freelance translator running a full-fledged business
such as an agency, you may find yourself besieged with these
calls outright.
The key to dealing with these calls, as well as calls from people
you DO want to talk to, is to STOP ANSWERING THE PHONE! Yes, you
read this correctly. Since you don't have a receptionist to
filter and field your calls, let your answering machine function
as your receptionist, and use it shamelessly.
Keep your answering machine and/or Caller ID set on or near your
desk and screen ALL your calls as they come in. If it's a call
from a client or potential client, or a loved one, by all means
pick up the phone and take the call, but if it's someone you
don't have the time or inclination to speak to, let the answering
machine take it.
Be especially rigid in applying this system when you are working
on an urgent translation, and let the important people in your
life know that you will be doing this. You won't believe how much
extra time is freed up when you simply stop answering calls that
neither help pay the rent nor directly contribute to the
enrichment of your personal life.
Alex's Comment...
This is a good idea if you're really busy and established. But if
you don't yet have a constant stream of work, you should answer
every call and just learn to be abrupt with salespeople and
survey interviewers...
"No I don't do surveys. Goodbye." 'click'
After you've done it once it's quite easy
Why?
As a project manager, sometimes when I'm trying to place a job
quickly, I don't have time to bother with answering machines. I
just go straight to the next name in the list.
When you're a stressed out project manager you need to speak to a
real person NOW!
3. Your E-mail Mailbox
"Tier" your e-mail mailbox just as you have done with the In box
on your desk. Your email software should allow you to organize
filters and folders for incoming and outgoing mail. If it
doesn't, change it. (Eudora and Claris are good for PC and Mac
respectively.)
My mailbox is organized like this, to give you some ideas...
- In box organized by sub folders entitled Urgent, My Leads, Resumes.
- Drafts box, to keep correspondence that I'm working on. It's sort of like the Hold box for my e-mail.
- Memberships box, to keep track of passwords, usernames, etc. for the mailing lists and web sites that I have joined.
- Templates box, where I keep boilerplate letters to assist me in responding to queries I get on a regular basis. When I get
a query, I can simply cut and paste phrases or paragraphs from the templates without typing everything out all over again,
hit Send, and voila! it's on its way to the recipient.
- Personal, where I keep old letters sent to and received from friends and loved ones.
Every time you receive spam, compose a filter for that specific
type of spam and add it to your Filters preferences. Make sure
the filter is worded very accurately so that you can route spam
directly to Trash without worrying that it might have been a
valid e-mail. As the filter list grows, you will "train" your
mailbox to become more efficient at filtering out spam.
If you subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, set your mailing
lists to Digest mode so that the emails you receive from the list
are compiled into one large digest and you don't get flooded with
individual emails.
This is especially helpful for high-volume mailing lists. When
you get a digest, all you have to do is go to the table of
contents, scan through it to find the topic(s) and message
number(s) you want, scroll down to what you are looking for, read
it, and delete the digest.
Apply the same "Quick Decision Rule" to your e-mail mailbox, just
as you would with the In box on your desk, and keep your In box
as clean as you would your desk. When e-mails come in, do
something with them immediately, or stick them in one of the
sub folders. In any case, don't let them sit in the In box and
clutter up your virtual "work space."
4. Your To-Do List
Keep a To-Do list on a legal pad and store it in or next to your
desk. This list has two parts...
- a master list of all your tasks, whether they are urgent or not
- a mini list of all your tasks for the upcoming day
Whenever you receive an incoming task, write it on the master
list, and write it on the mini list as well if it's more urgent.
At the beginning of each day, take a moment to look at your mini
list and mentally plan ahead and prioritize the upcoming day.
Then, as you work, check off each finished task. At the end of
each day, take another moment to look at your mini list again and
revise it as necessary to reflect what needs to be done the
following day. Then congratulate yourself on all the checks
you've made.
A real sense of personal satisfaction can be derived from seeing
all those check marks you have made at the end of each day. If
you wish, you can even create a folder for old mini lists and
master lists so that you can look in it from time to time and see
how far you've come in your business.
A To-Do list is not only a great motivator to keep you going, it
serves as a concrete and accurate way to monitor and record your
productivity.
Mary C. Maloof is a certified Spanish > English translator who
resides in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. She is the founder
and moderator of "SpTranslators," an Internet mailing list for
Spanish translators, founder and moderator of "Legaltranslators,"
an Internet mailing list for legal translators, director of The
American Web for International Languages, a worldwide job
referrals network for translators and interpreters, and owner of
Maloof Language Services, Inc., which offers a wide range of
translation and interpretation services. For more information
about her work, please contact her at
mmaloof@sprintmail.com
Mary also offers consulting services to translators - contact her for more details.
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