Poll: How many different projects are you usually working on at the same time? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How many different projects are you usually working on at the same time?".
This poll was originally submitted by Luna Jungblut. View the poll results »
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One for each hand.
Seriously, though, although obviously it varies, I would guesstimate two jobs on average.
Once I get to five jobs queued up, I tend to get stressed, so I try to keep things simple.
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One language for each half of the brain, hand or whatever, to follow on from Chris S's comment.
This week I have tried alternating between jobs because the client sent several and changed the order of priority a couple of times. It soon gets chaotic!
With the size of jobs I work with, I prefer to take them one at a time, and not worry about having five or six in the queue. But I often deliver two or three in a day.
I normally set them aside and proofread a... See more One language for each half of the brain, hand or whatever, to follow on from Chris S's comment.
This week I have tried alternating between jobs because the client sent several and changed the order of priority a couple of times. It soon gets chaotic!
With the size of jobs I work with, I prefer to take them one at a time, and not worry about having five or six in the queue. But I often deliver two or three in a day.
I normally set them aside and proofread after a break, so I may look at another job in the meantime. But I still only actually work on one at a time! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Other: At the same time? No, always one job at a time! | Jun 19, 2015 |
From time to time I do have a few projects lined up with different deadlines and I deal with them one after the other. Otherwise, if I’m working on a longer project and a regular client comes up with a smaller translation, I might interrupt the first one and do it.
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| Usually 2 or 3 | Jun 19, 2015 |
But right now 8 (6 as the LVC for the same agency)
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 12:40
Spanish to English
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"Usually"... hmm... Well, since I offer text revision (aka " proofreading") and post-editing services as well translation to my university clients, I usually have at least one academic paper lurking in the background until I find the time to revise and correct it.
I usually have more than one thing going on translation-wise too. For example, right now I'm trying to finish just under 2000 words of a 5000 word translation job for my best client. I wouldn't normally have any problem d... See more "Usually"... hmm... Well, since I offer text revision (aka " proofreading") and post-editing services as well translation to my university clients, I usually have at least one academic paper lurking in the background until I find the time to revise and correct it.
I usually have more than one thing going on translation-wise too. For example, right now I'm trying to finish just under 2000 words of a 5000 word translation job for my best client. I wouldn't normally have any problem doing this, but yesterday I had software issues (my Dragon add-on has suddenly started deactivating itself) and other interruptions which slowed me down considerably. Likewise, I've already suffered one power cut and Internet failure this morning... par for the course in this neck of the woods.
Anyway, once that job is done and delivered, I also have about 2000 words of a 5K translation about education to finish off for one of the universities, but these tend to be less urgent, so I'm hoping to be able to get most of that done, if not all, over the weekend; failing that, I'll finish it next week. Also on my current to-do list (revisions) are a new chapter of a doctorate thesis about henhouse ventilation, which is an ongoing nightmare for me (original text poorly written, uninspiring subject matter, too much information stuffed into too little space...), and another paper from a different university, about dairy livestock.
Yes, I don't usually give it much thought, but it appears that having more than one job on the go at the same time is standard operating procedure chez moi. ▲ Collapse
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Is my estimated average number of non-delivered, confirmed job entries of all sizes at any time in my list.
Sometimes it is zilch, and sometimes it's 10. I answered 4.
Currently it's 5, three relatively microscopic and two relatively big. Which means bills are potentially paid for the next 2-3 months, and any job coming in from now are for food, holiday, clothes, pension, savings and leisure.
And then it's back to square one.
Obviously, smaller incoming jobs are s... See more Is my estimated average number of non-delivered, confirmed job entries of all sizes at any time in my list.
Sometimes it is zilch, and sometimes it's 10. I answered 4.
Currently it's 5, three relatively microscopic and two relatively big. Which means bills are potentially paid for the next 2-3 months, and any job coming in from now are for food, holiday, clothes, pension, savings and leisure.
And then it's back to square one.
Obviously, smaller incoming jobs are squeezed in as needed within lead times of larger jobs until my back teeth are immerged. The thing is to juggle with all this with as much style and as few conflicts as poss, which is why I bought a dedicated management program.
Typical visibility is a few days, sometimes a week or two, but agency customer loyalty prevents me from chewing my nails over such short perspective. Besides, long visibility is good up to a certain point, because it also means that you can't accommodate anyone else in-between, or that you lose life points by ending up working a silly number of hours when the long-job deadline is looming. A constant balancing act.
Philippe ▲ Collapse
| | | | | It depends on the macro or micro view | Jun 19, 2015 |
Teresa Borges wrote:
Other: At the same time? No, always one job at a time!
From time to time I do have a few projects lined up with different deadlines and I deal with them one after the other. Otherwise, if I’m working on a longer project and a regular client comes up with a smaller translation, I might interrupt the first one and do it.
From a micro standpoint, of course I can only work on one project at a time, though I can leave one processor core rendering, say, subtitled video, while I use another core to translate text in this meantime. However technically *I* will only be translating that text, as the computer can do that unsupervised, also when I'm sound asleep, if it's a long video in FHD.
From a macro standpoint, it's random, usually limited between 0-6, like Teresa (above) does. The usual roller-coaster ride.
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Rebecca Hendry 
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:40
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
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I'm often working on anything between 1 and 8 projects at a time. I like to leave texts to rest so that I can come back to them with a refreshed eye, so I'll usually do a draft of one job and then work on something else.
My projects vary in size a lot and it's nice to work on a few small projects at the same time as a jumbo one.
| | | | Ventnai
Spain
Local time: 12:40
German to English
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| Usually a few | Jun 19, 2015 |
I usually have a few on the go as they are often quite short. I have four right now: three with about 500 words and one with 6000. I obviously calculate if I have time in my schedule to fit in new translations and often suggest a later deadline to ensure I can - clients usually concede.
| | | | Thayenga
Germany
Local time: 12:40
Member (2009)
English to German
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Usually I am working simultaneously (more or less ) on between 2- 4 projects. Sometimes only on 1, at other times on more than 4 projects.
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If we're just talking about translation projects, I usually only have one at a time. If we include all the other projects and things that I still need to start/finish, it's probably closer to 10 ^_^
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Since the start of 2015, I've had no time with fewer than 2 jobs on my plate, and at one point it was 4. I'll be in the middle of something when a regular client contacts me. I explain that I'm not available until such-and-such a date, and they tell me they're willing to wait. That's how the jobs pile up.
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