Making home work less work

 

[home office*]

According to the old Jewish joke, work is something you would get the maid to do for you if you could. Clearly working at home remains, to one degree or another, an obligation. That said, the task does not necessarily have to be utterly unpleasant. In fact, it is quite possible to render working from home a relatively pleasant experience without investing significant money by properly arranging the work space, taking breaks of all kinds and having a “real” life outside of work.

As home workers, especially freelancers, spend so many hours in their work space, it is vital to have a comfortable chair, install appropriate lighting and visually divide the work space from the rest of the house. A comfortable chair is a vital element in terms of physical comfort, affecting all elements of work over time, including fatigue and tension. Simply put, an ergonomic chair adds efficiency and effectiveness. Consequently, while sometimes rather pricey, purchasing an appropriate chair is a worthwhile, even necessary, business investment. Lighting has a more subtle long-term effect. Over a long day, appropriately strong and properly located fixtures can significantly reduce fatigue by limiting eye strain. Psychologically, the most important physical aspect of an office is that it is visually separate from the rest of the house. While for most translators “out of sight, out of mind” may not completely occur, a separate office, i.e., not in the kitchen, living room or bedroom, not only greatly increases concentration, it allows home workers to visually walk away from their work when they need a break or finish their day. It thus creates a clear distinction between work and other life, just as office workers experience. At the end of the day, one closes the office until the morning, without being reminded of tasks to be done by a pile of papers on the desk. In these ways, a home office remains an office for all purposes.

One of the great advantages of being a freelancer is the flexibility to pace work throughout the day based on personal and objective factors. First, everybody has a different concentration flow. These elements include warm up time, i.e., how long does it take after waking up in the morning before the person actually starts working; focus slope, how intensely and long can a person concentrate before becoming fatigued; and alertness times, i.e., morning as compared to evening people. In other words, people have unique patterns of ideal concentration. Between these peak times, it is necessary both physically and psychologically to take a break. Since there is no boss monitoring “productivity”, home workers can take breaks as often and as long as they want as well as choose their relief. These refreshment times range from 5 minutes to prepare coffee or tea (I highly recommend stocking up on quality coffee and tea but not abusing it) to 10-minute walks in the garden, 15-minute household tasks, such as hanging the laundry and doing the dishes, 30-minute exercise sessions and even 1-hour naps. As long as the required work is completed by the end of the day, it makes no fundamental difference what the actually time distribution is . These breaks not only allow homeworkers to accomplish more but also better work.

The key to powerful home work is antimatter, as they would say in Star Trek, specifically scheduling a few fixed, uncancellable times every week for pleasant activities. These activities can include lunch with friends, doing sport, volunteer activity or any other activity that feeds the body and soul. The key is to be with people we like. While this “lost time” may add some stress by reducing available work hours, it more than compensates by creating positive energy, which allows us not only to be productive but to enjoy our work. “All work, no play” is not sustainable in the long term.

Clearly, work is work and required for economic survival. Working at home may be a matter of choice or necessity. Nonetheless, it is both practical and worthwhile to create the ideal office, take breaks and avoid feeling like a slave to work. It is possible to minimize the “work” element of home work.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit: pixabay

Freelance business potential or I had a good day

Many years ago, I learned of a way to measure the potential of a business quickly and inexpensively. The technique is to identify the business day with the best results, analyze what went right that day, and apply the lessons learned from this analysis. Of great relevance to freelancers, it takes into account that each business is fundamentally different mainly due to the fact each person and set of circumstances is unique. This technique helps define the current actual potential of a business rather than its theoretical and maybe unattainable one.

Clearly freelancing involves factors not relevant to standard businesses. Freelancing is generally conducted from a residence and not always even in a dedicated room. As a result, friends and family represent a major disturbance factor. Furthermore, household duties, including laundry and cooking, can be a serious time robber. This lack of clear distinction between work and home also creates a tendency to relax business discipline as distractors are close and plenty. As freelancers are their own bosses, work discipline is internal matter subject to moods and whims, unlike the traditional workplace where fear of the boss keeps people on their toes. Finally, freelancers must handle sales, marketing, production, bookkeeping and post-sale service, often dividing their concentration and rendering them less efficient in any or all of the tasks. Thus, the potential of a freelancer is not identical to that of a standard business.

Given the multiples hats a freelancer wears, the term productivity can be measured on many forms, depending on what is required. The results can include an order from a new client, proper job preparation, successful resolution of a customer issue, sending of invoices, collection of debts, preparation of marketing material, cleaning of the desk and even producing a product or service. All of these required to earn money but are not directly reflected in daily income. Psychologically, freelancers must consider each one a proper and effective use of work time.

Given that the productivity of freelancers is so dependent on themselves, a good day begins by starting the morning properly.  A good night’s sleep creates the conditions for proper energy while getting waking up at the ideal hour, both individual matters, helps starts the day with maximum momentum. Likewise, some type of breakfast fuels the morning hours. Feeling physically good is a basic requirement for the ideal day.

In addition, since outside disturbances, both work-related and domestic, drain energy, the efficient day begins with a clear head. Some people have the skill and/or discipline to block out external matters but most freelancers have to clear them away. First of all, the best day begins with no pending email matters from previous days, the mental version of a clear desk. Not always in our control, it is preferable that there are no unpleasant appointments scheduled that day, such as the dentist, which not only take time but create anxiety. Facebook is the enemy of productivity.  Since nothing there is truly urgent, the mere refusal to open it reduces that temptation. By contrast, scheduling a pleasant evening activity creates a positive expectation for the evening as well as reinforces discipline in terms of staying on task as the available time is limited. Importantly, translators must educate the friends and family that work hours are precisely those even if they are physically at home. Admittedly, this is not an easy goal to achieve. Thus, the mind is in focus on the tasks at hand.

The work process directly affects productivity. For example, a clear but flexible schedule helps directs the order and priority of tasks.  For example, if a translation is due EOD, the first draft should be completed as early as possible in order to have as much “forget time” before final QA. In additioon, ideally, all elements of the job should be ready. If a translator is using a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool on a document from a PDF, the document should be converted into Word the night before, a task that can be done even when the person is bit tired. If writing is the task at hand, the freelancer should organize the approach and material beforehand. It is possible to properly focus completely on either content or language, but not both. Setting daily goals dividing the tasks that must be completed and those that we would like to be completed is a useful technique for many people. If there are multiple tasks for that day, a list helps freelancers move through the day by creating easy recall and helps prevent avoidable emergencies. If a task has multiple stages, each aspect should be considered separately, a successful method for reducing stress in large, complicated projects. For example, the creation of a website involves attaining the needed information, creating the text, defining the design concept and flow, production, proofing, etc., each of which is a complete task in itself. Of course, if specific physical materials are required, such as a printer toner, sufficient amounts should be in stock. Like a regular business, an ideal business day begins with the preparation on the previous day.

When all of the stars are aligned, it is amazing how much a freelancer can accomplish in a single day and how much satisfaction (and money) it provides. That magical work day is the current potential of the business, which can change in either direction for many reasons at any given time. The good news is that freelancers, like all businesspeople, have the power to influence those factors and recreate that success. Just as it is important to understand yourself to achieve happiness, an enterprise, no matter how small it is, needs to understand not only its failure but also its success. Scio te when the sun is shining.

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