Clickrastination
Reblog from TranslateCluj
As freelancers, we are pretty ‘free’, meaning that we have the freedom to organize our work as we see fit. No bosses, no fixed office hours, no internet or messaging restrictions and no dress code. I mean, sure, we have clients, PMs and all of that, but if we deliver high-quality target texts by their specified deadline, they are perfectly happy.
That said, being free is not easy! Let me explain. So I’m at my desk, casually translating a medical text of some sort, and I bump into a term or expression that I need to research. I scratch my head a bit, then I decide to go to my browser. Right, so now I have a browser tab in front of me open to a news article I was passionately reading, but never got the chance to finish because I got interrupted by… err… my work. ‘Oh, right’ I say to myself ‘I didn’t finish this article, let me just quickly…’ So I read through it, and I’m still hooked by this when… ping… I get a text from Elvira: ‘Hey, guess what I’m doing right now!’, ‘What are you doing right now?’, ‘I’m cooking asparagus’ , ‘Oh, cool, I should do this, too!’… 30 texts later I realize that I was actually translating something. Right, right, work mode back on! I go back to my translation and I start typing blissfully, my fingers typing at a remarkable speed! Wait a minute, wait a minute! This is not the translation I was working on, it’s another task that I started earlier, open in another CAT tool or app that I have to deliver way later than the translation I was working on 10 minutes ago. Silly me! So back to translation task 1! I re-open the window, read the last segment and I remember that I have to research that bloody term or expression… Back to my browser, then. Hopefully, this time, I won’t be distracted :).
You’re probably expecting me to give you some tips about how to avoid that, but I actually haven’t got any, except for, maybe, don’t do it! or refrain from doing that too often! Also, a tight deadline might help, because you would get more absorbed by the task at hand.
In the end, let me simply confess: I’m Thomas, and I’m a clickrastinator!
