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Strategies for managing stress and strain
Many of us accept that physical stress and mental strain are the price we pay for success as translators and interpreters. Michael Benis provides a number of practical pointers to help us exert a measure of control so that we don't become victims of our own success.
Managing stress requires a management mindset
Get into conversation with any successful self-employed person and they're likely to tell you that when it comes to stress and strain, they can cheerfully divide their careers into two periods: one in which they rose to the challenge of finding enough work to keep them busy and a second when they subsequently learned to juggle more requests for work than they could comfortably handle. Translators and interpreters are no exception to this rule. We enjoy all the benefits of working in a challenging and rewarding profession that offers great freedom and independence, but at the price of having to plan and organise every aspect of our work, including marketing and human resource management. That sounds fairly pretentious: talking about ourselves as if we were the microcosm of a large company, but that is in many ways precisely what we are. Not only that, but adopting such a mindset can also make it much easier for us to take a step back and look at how we work in order to make our businesses more successful. Taking this step is essential to ensure that we don't become the victims of our own success, struggling to cope with a demanding workload until something gives under the strain, but instead manage the demands on our bodies and time to ensure we are always working (and playing) at our best.
But is stress really such a problem?
The honest answer regarding interpreters and translators is that we really don't know. There are, nevertheless, a large number of stories in circulation about colleagues whose physical and/or mental health has suffered under a heavy workload. It was in recognition of this that ITI first formally recognised the problem at our Bath conference many moons ago and in the bulletin article on repetitive strain injury last year. This year's Warwick conference will be addressing these problems in two special workshops that will hopefully help us gain more knowledge, although it was quite clear from Bath not only that there was a problem, but that we'd merely scratched the surface.
A practical approach
This article aims to provide a series of practical pointers rather than to analyse the causes and treatment of repetitive strain injury, back problems, stress, exhaustion and depression. The basic approach is that prevention is better than cure and that watchfulness can help us manage any problems and prevent them from deteriorating. As always, half the solution consists in recognising that there is a problem in the first place. Although physical and mental stress and considered separately in this article, a further core theme is that they are inextricably linked. Look after one and you look after the other.
Simple tips to keep your body painlessly productive
Workstation layout
It never ceases to amaze me how many of us simply stack everything we need on top of a table and hope that this will see us through. Well, it might do, but it could also leave us in such pain by the middle of the afternoon that we simply can't carry on working, whatever our deadlines dictate.
I was at a colleague's for dinner not many months ago who told me about their discomfort while asking for advice about speech recognition. Before even considering any of the technical aspects, I said: "Let's have a look at your office". I've got to say, it was a much neater office than my own, but at the same time the cause of their discomfort was immediately obvious. Like many an elegant photo illustration in House and Garden, the keyboard was slap, bang in the middle of the desk, parallel to the edge, while the monitor was placed seductively in one corner angled towards it. After six to eight hours sitting like that, with back, shoulders, neck and eventually arms all twisted to one side, it was a miracle my friend could still type at all.
So that's the first tip: set your workstation up so that you can relax and not have to twist to one side or the other, or stretch to reach anything you need, including your mouse. Some colleagues have extraordinarily impressive keyboards that wouldn't look out of place on a concert grand piano, as a result of which they are placing much too much stress on their mouse arm, which is angled out way too far to one side.
Chair height
Good blood circulation is very important if you're to stay comfortable sitting in the same place all day long. The height of your chair should allow you to place your feet flat on the floor (or on a footrest) so that your feet are taking the weight of your legs and not your thighs, with no pressure from the edge of the chair under your thighs. Chairs that can be angled slightly downwards also help. While we're on the subject of chairs, there are two more matters worthy of attention:
It doesn't really matter whether your chair gives any upper back support or not, but it must support your lumbar region. Chairs with a small back pad can be much better at this than so-called "executive" chairs that aren't profiled to come back into the lumbar region above the seat. Chairs offering some form of depth adjustment are also more comfortable in the long run.
Lastly, if you've got a chair with arms, they should either be adjustable or at least low enough to stop you from having to raise your shoulders and hunch up, which can lead to considerable tension and discomfort by the end of the day.
Desk height
First things first, you don't have to buy some massive great desk if you don't like them. In fact, you don't have to buy a desk at all. After years of faceless steel and plastic desks, I'm merrily using a tiled Moroccan table which looks a great deal prettier, thank you very much. All that is really important about your "desk" is that it's at the right height. With your fingers on your keyboard or mouse, your shoulders should be relaxed and your forearms more or less parallel to the floor. Anything lower or higher could cause wrist or shoulder problems. Don't worry too much about how your desk height influences the height of your monitor, since it is unlikely to make it too low. At the same time, don't waste any of your money on the little stands that raise your monitor: anything that takes the edge of the screen higher than your level line of sight will end up being tiring. Just think about it: when you're walking down the road you naturally tend to look slightly downwards. That's also the most relaxed position for your head when working at a screen.
Mice aren't nice
Using a mouse can cause quite a lot of tension in the hand and wrist which can set you up for carpal tunnel and tendonitis problems. If you can get on with them, a trackball is a much better ergonomic solution. I myself suffered so badly from tendonitis following a job requiring intense mouse use about a decade ago that I couldn't use my right hand to operate a mouse or type for several weeks. The relief upon moving to a trackball was immediate and I have never looked back. What's more, because you don't physically have to move a trackball around on your desk, it makes it much easier for you to organise your work surface.
Talk don't type
Yes, you've guessed it! Try speech recognition. Most people can talk faster than they can type and dictating puts much less of a strain on the body, although you do have to remember to take give your voice a break every now and then and have an occasional drink.
Don't push yourself. Take regular breaks
The title says it all. Regular breaks keep you fresh, helping you work more productively for longer hours. Get up, walk around. Go to another room. Make a cup of tea. Sit in the garden. In short, enjoy yourself! Doing so will relieve tension (both physical and mental) and restore your concentration. Use your imagination about what you do in your breaks and keep them varied. This will make them both more enjoyable and more effective. Go for a walk round the block. Take a shower. Give yourself a break in more ways than one: put on Buster Keaton video and fix up a pizza rather than your usual quick sandwich. A little humour can go a long way to dispelling physical and mental tension.
Spice things up with a little variety
Try and accept a varied range of jobs, keeping spare capacity during long jobs to insert short ones that ring the changes. Alternate working on jobs for which you can turn out a large number of words per hour with others that require frequent research. Alternatively, clear the air with something on a completely different subject or switch between technical work and literary translations etc. This will reduce the mental strain of your work and your body will thank you for it.
Bring on the violins
Whatever your taste in music, you may well find that alternating "silent" periods with the stimulation or solace of a favourite string quartet, opera or punk rock band is just what you need to get your blood flowing in the right direction again. Every little bit helps...
Listen to your body
It is very rare for physical problems to come on without any warning. So, if you find yourself suffering from a "twinge" that persists for more than a couple of days, it's always better not to soldier on hoping that it will simply go away. The chances are you will just end up aggravating the problem and making it more difficult to deal with. Evaluate how you're working. Does the way you sit place any muscles or tendons under constant tension? Are you taking reasonably frequent breaks? Are you so worried about missing a possible deadline that you're always tensed up?
Analysing the causes of discomfort in this way can help you get the problem under control before it has you under its control. But taking care of the causes as well as the symptoms is also, of course, the only way of identifying a long-term solution that prevents the problem from recurring. At the same time, you should never feel that you have to go it alone. A sympathetic GP is always a good first port of call, but there are also other professionals offering effective ways of managing and overcoming pain, including massage, trigger point therapy and the Alexander technique. Many interpreters could benefit from the latter, particularly if their line of interpreting leaves them standing for many hours a day. There can also be hidden benefits: making yourself heard in court or during a busy meeting is often a matter of posture as much as lung power.
Invest a little energy in your health
The best way you can help your body to help you work effectively is to make sure you keep fit. If you get regular, strenuous exercise, sitting on a chair banging away at a keyboard - unpleasant as it is - is going to sap your physical resources much less than it would for someone who never does anything more taxing than tear open a packet of biscuits or operate a remote control. But all this is just part of the picture. Exercise doesn't simply keep you fit, it relieves tension and promotes the release of endorphins, which combat the effects of stress and have a natural antidepressant action. In short, it's good for both mind and body.
More than one language professional of my acquaintance keeps body and soul together with regular sessions at the swimming pool during working hours. One of them even crumbles occasionally and allows themselves the luxury of a sauna. This sort of pampering isn't just good for your health, it's good for morale. Every translator or interpreter should act just like a responsible company and look after their number one employee. An exercise machine at home can be a valuable investment. Perhaps the most cost-effective exercise machine is the humble dog, which (like cats) not only gives you company and helps relieve tension during the day, but also has the distinction of being the only exercise machine that insists you take it out and "use" it as intended.
Walking (with or without a dog) is a very effective form of gentle exercise if you do it briskly (but not so briskly that you couldn't hold a conversation). And if you get out to somewhere with beautiful views it can, of course, lift the spirits too.
One way or another, investing a little energy in your health is not only free, but also one of the few investments you can be sure will have a payback.
Helping mind over matter
The stressful temptation is to believe that coping is all a matter of keeping things under control. But the truth is that it can also be a matter of knowing when to let go. That's why I covered the physical aspects first. No one apart from a fanatical sergeant major would argue that there is anything to be gained from struggling on through the pain. As people who work with our minds, we translators and interpreters should be as careful about mental fatigue as an athlete is about husbanding their physical resources. Following tradition and keeping at least a one day in the week to unwind in is as good a starting point as any.
Yet we shouldn't dismiss control, either. Feeling that we are up to the task and able to cope with whatever our working lives throw at us is important in more ways than one. The means to achieve this is to have a roadmap, which can essentially be one of three: a strategy for quickly gaining more customers in order to build up a steady stream of work and a reassuringly steady stream of income; a strategy for career development that reassures us things will gradually improve, enabling us to rely on a comfortable income without having to work 24 hours a day, and lastly a system that enables us to meet our customers' planned and exceptional needs without constantly running close to burnout. In each of these cases we gain from not feeling trapped in the present and are relieved of the stress of having to reinvent the wheel with every new business decision, providing us with clear bearings at each turn in the road.
The first to two cases have been handled in quite some detail in the bulletin article on marketing oneself which will soon be available on the ITI website, so we won't dwell on them here and instead concentrate on the third.
Motivating your customers to plan their needs
A successful, established translator working almost entirely with direct clients should not find it difficult to encourage them to book cyclical or long-term projects in advance, handling everything else strictly on a first-come, first-served basis and charging an urgency surcharge for anything that cannot wait. This allows us to meet their needs while simultaneously providing a framework for them to organise how they commission work. At the same time, it also allows us to make it perfectly clear (without harping on about it) that way are an effective and valued resource that handles their needs effectively, is prepared " go the extra mile" when required but naturally has to charge "overtime" rates which they will, in an equally businesslike manner, have to factor into their own assessment of a job's urgency.
There's no need to feel nervous about rolling out such a system. It is, after all, exactly what most traders and professionals adopt and there's no reason why translators shouldn't behave in exactly the same way, whatever the doom mongers may tell us. Bending over backwards to satisfy every request, not applying surcharges and working from dawn till midnight will certainly prove exciting and make you feel wanted. But it will also place an increasing strain on your business and personal relationships, while exposing you to the risk of a deterioration or sudden lapse in quality that could lose you customers. However hard you work to meet an unrealistic deadline, your customer is more likely to remember that your standards were variable, rather than that you pulled out all the stops to meet an urgent need. That's partly because "urgent deadlines" don't always reflect the end user's needs and are often arbitrarily chosen by someone who wants to appear efficient but doesn't understand the translation process. Work closely with your clients to educate them about the value of your work and what is required to produce a translation that will do their company proud, informing, instructing and convincing their publics while reiterating and reinforcing their corporate image. Once you have such a strategy in place, you will find that workload management and stress management almost become automatic.
Plan your time to include a safety margin
Second only to devising a customer management strategy, it's essential to develop a system for organising your time. The biggest problem is accurately estimating how log a job will take, which is really something that can only come with experience, although it is worth noting that most translators generate around 2,000 words per day. This can, however, fall to little more than 1,000 for highly complex (e.g. legal) translations, just as it can rise to as much as 3,000 to 5,000 words and even more for technical translations. Always remember to include ample time for checking and revising your work.
Draw up a "diary" as you take on bookings. This diary should include monthly slots for routine "chores" such as doing your invoices, tracking incoming and outgoing payments, keeping up-to-date on your accounts, running marketing campaigns and planning your holidays early enough in advance to ensure they can't get hijacked by a rash of customer bookings that suddenly leave you with no time to get away. When booking in work, never allow advance bookings to account for considerably over half your work capacity, so that you are always able to cater for your customers' day-to-day needs. Likewise, always build in a good safety margin. That way your schedule and sleep patterns won't be utterly destroyed by the occasional "simple technical translation" that turns into an utter nightmare in which every second word requires hours of research. Likewise, any of those nasty little surprises that can happen, ranging from illness to computer problems or a blocked drain, won't send the best laid plans crashing down and your blood pressure skyrocketing. The idea is a simple one: to manage your workload in such a way that it always remains manageable.
Give yourself intermediate targets
Break long jobs down into smaller chunks, each with its own deadline. This will help keep panic at bay by, for example, allowing you to tackle each week as the step in a countdown, labelling them D1 (deadline minus one week) and D2 (deadline minus two weeks) etc, so that it's easy for you to track that you're on schedule and, if the worst comes to the worst, take any minor remedial action required before the situation snowballs and possibly becomes irretrievable. It will also make it easier for you to calculate how much slack has accumulated when you are running ahead of schedule later on in your project (assuming you have built in a sufficient safety margin), allowing you to make quick yet reliable decisions about whether to accept any new smaller jobs that come your way.
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First published in ITI Bulletin, 2003. |
