| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | How to get yourself to work when you don\'t want to do it :-) Thread poster: Dante1
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Arianne Farah 
Canada
Local time: 16:33
Member (2008)
English to French
| a break every hour or so helps.... | Apr 14, 2010 |
Dante1 wrote:
In fact it was a momentary weakness in the middle of a series of complicated translations with very tight deadlines
I was going to suggest to simply take a day off to find your focus again - forcing yourself to work one day may impact your productivity for an entire week.
In your situation - when faced with long days & tight deadlines, I usually work 45-50 minutes and then do something else for 10-15: play a few rounds of boggle against the online boggle solver (you can take the translator away from the words but you can't take the words away from the translator), play a few rounds of tennis on the Wii or Rock Band on the xbox, play some piano - anything to clear my head (notice every suggestion starts with the word "play"). It helps me work longer and improves my concentration on the task at hand when I get back to it. This is of course when as you mentioned, you're tired and not in the "zone" - I've been able to work 5-6 hours without so much as lifting my head from my computer and then marveled at how much time had flown.
Hang in there Take shorter & more frequent breaks and once you're done don't forget to take a few (or several) days off!
| | | | | I'm not sure I can | May 6, 2010 |
There are two major reasons for reluctance to work.
Both are motivational, but one is mainly due to the source
text and the other to more long-term mental states.
I assume that over the long-term, no-one works for money
(but we all have to be paid). So I will not repeat what has
already been said about visualizing the monetary rewards
of completing the work. I am not sure that this would be
effective for me: I hate invoicing because it sh... See more There are two major reasons for reluctance to work.
Both are motivational, but one is mainly due to the source
text and the other to more long-term mental states.
I assume that over the long-term, no-one works for money
(but we all have to be paid). So I will not repeat what has
already been said about visualizing the monetary rewards
of completing the work. I am not sure that this would be
effective for me: I hate invoicing because it shows me how
little I am being paid. My glass is half empty.
If the source is subtly repetitive, copiously boring, poorly
written, or just plain insults your intelligence as you
reproduce it, one way to interest a lively mind is to
procrastinate until there is a perceived or intuitively
understood 50:50 chance of getting the work delivered by
deadline. Of course, this is a risky way of coping, but the
point is that risk makes otherwise uninteresting activities
more pleasurable.
Reluctance to continue to deal with certain types of source text
is only a temporary problem. Get done what you currently have in,
and qualify and reject future work that is going to cause you
these kinds of motivational problems. Of course, you may not
always be able to get satisfying work, but the more satisfaction
you get from your work, the happier you will be over the long term.
Another strategy that you can use, if you can obtain the voices,
is to get your computer to read the source to you. It adds another
dimension. If you are not already using text-to-speech to read
your translation back to you, you don't know what you're missing.
If the work is something that would normally engage your
interest, then you have a more deepseated problem.
Basically, the state we want to aim for is flow: generating
text with satisfying confidence and at a satisfying speed.
In this state, the only time we check our dictionaries or the
'net is when our minds demand some variation of rhythm.
If the rhythm is broken up because of difficulties in the text,
we have to be adult and WORK.
If you can no longer find flow in the kind of work that did it for you
in the past, perhaps part of the flow was learning. Now you know
how to do it, it has become drudgery. With the extra satisfaction
of learning and discovery gone, the pay seems inadequate.
So you procrastinate. Procrastination is a well-known part of
the practice of text production.
But you could also be headed for burn out.
This is far more serious. Driven by the insecurity of the freelancer,
continually forcing yourself to work is a bad idea. If you find
yourself in pain or discomfort that you only notice when you stop
working, you are in trouble. The forced concentration of work
blanks out the pain, which is caused by work. You are fighting
the fire with gasoline. Then, one day, you have occupationally
suicidal thoughts, such as,
They are always making me meet their deadlines,
now they can wait for me.
That's the kind of thing you find yourself thinking when you
are taking an hour over every sentence. Probably, for several weeks,
you have been having actually suicidal thoughts, which are quite
casual:
You see yourself crashing your car into a pillar holding
up a an overpass.
You imagine yourself drowned in your bath.
It is important to pay attention to yourself, your work,
and your attitude to it. Rehabilitating yourself after burn out,
if you survive it, is more costly than limiting the work you do. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Krzysztof Kajetanowicz (X)
Poland
Local time: 22:33
English to Polish
+ ...
David Eunice wrote:
If the source is subtly repetitive, copiously boring, poorly
written, or just plain insults your intelligence as you
reproduce it, one way to interest a lively mind is to
procrastinate until there is a perceived or intuitively
understood 50:50 chance of getting the work delivered by
deadline. Of course, this is a risky way of coping, but the
point is that risk makes otherwise uninteresting activities
more pleasurable.
Hahahha you're a mind reader! Though the chance does get beyond 50:50 to, say, 30:70.
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if you have family and children to support, you always get yourself to work, even if you don't want to...
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| The 50:50 risk is the most pleasurable... | May 6, 2010 |
[quote]Krzysztof Kajetanowicz wrote:
David Eunice wrote:
Hahahha you're a mind reader! Though the chance does get beyond 50:50 to, say, 30:70.
According to the information presented by Robert Sapolsky
in the Ted.com presentation I mentioned, you are depriving
yourself of pleasure if the perceived risk veers beyond 50:50.
You want to stay in the dopamine zone and avoid adrenal
exhaustion from the terror of plummeting toward unmissable deadlines.
@Giovanni
You are a better man than I am. I have similar obligations and have
always managed to keep the household ticking over, but routinization
does turn what were once interesting tasks into WORK.
I do manage to get it done, but I am not a machine.
| | | | Krzysztof Kajetanowicz (X)
Poland
Local time: 22:33
English to Polish
+ ...
David Eunice wrote:
You want to stay in the dopamine zone and avoid adrenal
exhaustion from the terror of plummeting toward unmissable deadlines.
As far as medium term planning goes, yes.
As far as a raging deadline goes, while at 30:70 my brain is indeed screaming '"idiot idiot idiot", my fingers are thinking "why don't we type a little faster".
I just printed your post and hung it next to my desk. To say that the post hits the nail on the head is a huge understatement.
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