The Summer Shift: wobbly workflow

As we head into November and the days get shorter, I’ve been looking back on what’s been an up-and-down summer, and not just in terms of the weather.

Back in July, I wrote about a shift in what I’m working on, away from a long-term lexicography project and back to the regular freelance juggling act. The lexicography work hasn’t finished altogether, but from the start of August, I dropped down to significantly fewer hours. I had a new writing project lined up and I thought I’d managed to arrange my schedule to balance the two projects fairly evenly for the remainder of the year. So, how’s that been going?

Delays, delays, delays

The new project, writing a workbook for a new coursebook series, was due to use authoring software that I’d been told would need setting up before I got started. This was pencilled in to happen towards the end of July/beginning of August, then I was due to start work on my first unit at the end of August. The set-up, which I thought might take a couple of days, turned out to be incredibly messy and dragged on in dribs and drabs for weeks – waiting for replies to emails about problems I hit, waiting to arrange a call with an IT person and all hampered by the fact it was summer and key people were ‘on leave’.

Frustratingly, at the same time, there were changes going on in my lexicography work too which left me unable to carry on at several points as I waited for things to be implemented in-house. Those delays weren’t especially long, but just happened to coincide with the delays on the other project leaving me twiddling my thumbs and watching my income slip away. It might seem nice to have time ‘off’ right in the middle of summer, but they were the kind of delays where I was checking my email each day hoping for progress, so I couldn’t really use the time to do much else. And all round, it left me with worringly few paid hours through August.

And we’re off!

The software issues finally got resolved at the start of September and I got started on some writing just a week or so later than planned. I settled into the rhythm I’d envisaged for a couple of weeks, with roughly a third of my weekly hours on dictionary work and two-thirds on the writing project.

Because it was the first unit of a new project, there was a bit of time waiting for feedback and redrafting, then the unit had to be passed up the line for approval before I could carry on. Annoyingly, this once again coincided with a bit of a pause in my lexicography work and a few days of thumb-twiddling. Luckily, I had a talk to prep, so managed to fill the time productively, albeit unpaid.

October overload

I’d hoped to make a start on my next WB unit before I went away to the Euralex conference at the start of October, but for various reasons, it didn’t happen. That left me playing catch-up for a couple of weeks when I got back and working well over the number of hours I’d usually put in at my desk. It was only a handful of extra hours, but because it was a new project and new software, the extra focus and concentration involved really took its toll on me physically.

Finding my flow

As I’ve explained before, in order to manage a chronic pain condition, I need to work in relatively short bursts spread out through the day and through the week with plenty of breaks in-between. That’s super-easy with lexicography work that breaks down naturally into short stints. Activities for a workbook should also be fairly modular, but as this is for C1 level and each unit includes relatively long reading and listening texts, it’s easy to get caught up and spend longer stretches at my desk focused on getting a section sorted and not wanting to interrupt the flow while I’ve got everything clear in my head. The authoring software is also proving to be especially fiddly, which means greater stress and tension through my shoulders and hands manipulating the mouse to get the formatting correct.

When I talk about work taking a strain on my health, people often tell me to “be careful” and “take it easy”. I know the comments are well meant, but they’re also slightly grating because they infer that it’s somehow my fault and that I should just organize my work better so that it didn’t impact my health … which of course, is vastly easier said than done! When you’re trying to get your head around a complex new project, dealing with various inevitable stress factors (delays, miscommunication, looming deadlines) and you’re also under financial pressure, “taking it easy” isn’t always feasible.

Settling down

Thankfully, the writing project does seem to be settling down, with some of those initial teething problems sorted out. I’ve also pushed back a bit on the schedule, which has concertinaed up slightly from what I’d originally envisaged. I don’t want to extend deadlines too much because it’s a fee-based project, so if I take longer working on it, I effectively lose income, but a bit of shuffling by the odd day here and there, I think will make for a slightly easier workflow. 

Deadlines on sticky notes to allow for reshuffling!

 

Last week was moving towards being a slightly better balance of hours and towards the end of the week, there was a sense of feeling more on top of things. This weekend was also my first fully non-working weekend in several weeks (although I did write this blog post!). So, I’m hoping I can find a better workflow through November and December at least … before the added stress of needing to find new work from January onwards starts to kick in! It’s making me wonder how I’ve managed for the past 25 years of freelancing! A few easy years of ticking along with one project and I feel like I’ve rather lost the knack of the freelance juggle.

The cost of speaking: ELT conferences as a freelancer

Recently, I’ve seen a number of posts and calls for papers for upcoming ELT conferences and had a few online exchanges with colleagues trying to encourage me to sign up for events coming up in 2024.

I love going to ELT conferences. As a freelancer who spends most of the year working alone at home, it’s a really good opportunity to catch up with ELT colleagues on both a social and professional level. It’s a good way to get a feel for what’s going on in the industry – sometimes just confirming what I’ve been seeing on social media, but occasionally throwing up new perspectives and information as well. And it’s a really important networking opportunity – maintaining contacts, making new ones, finding out who’s moved where in the ELT publishing merry-go-round, and talking to the right people about potential new projects.

Speaking at an event boosts all of those things. If your name’s in the programme, it flags to people you’re there and they’re more likely to seek you out, whether or not they come along to your session. It raises your profile and reminds people of your area of expertise. It also gives you a focus for the event.

However … attending and speaking at a conference is really expensive, not just in terms of the obvious costs of registration and travel, but the indirect costs too which are often far more significant.

The surfaces costs: The costs of registration can range enormously depending on the event. Sometimes speakers get free registration, but often they don’t. There’s travel and accommodation. Then you can add on all the miscellaneous costs of things like food and endless cups of coffee!

The prep: For me, this is the biggest ‘cost’ of speaking at an event. To prepare a new talk from scratch takes a lot of time:

·         initial time to come up with an idea and sketch out notes

·         putting together a proposal. Proposal forms vary – some are quite simple and just require a title and summary, others are more long-winded with abstracts and summaries and various other questions to be answered, all within strict word limits.

·         putting together your actual session, deciding on a structure, doing your research, designing your slides and deciding what you’ll say to go with each one.

·         rehearsing and working out your timings, then rehearsing again until you’re confident in what you’re going to say.

Nowadays, there’s often a requirement to do some form of promotion for your session. Increasingly, that’s a video which you’re told “won’t take long”, but in my experience, usually swallows up at least a whole morning – deciding what to say, getting set up, doing a few takes, uploading and doing a bit of editing, then posting or sending on the final video.

How long all this takes depends, in part, on whether it’s a completely new talk or a new version of a talk you’ve given before. Occasionally, I’ve been able to reuse talks several times, but that’s dependant on whether the session fits in with the theme of an event, whether it’s still up-to-date and relevant, and whether a sponsor is happy for you to repeat it. (I’ll come onto the issue of sponsors in a bit.) But I’d say anywhere between 15 and 25 hours’ prep is what I’d expect.

As someone managing a chronic health condition, I have to strictly limit the hours I spend at my desk each week, so prep for a conference can’t just be added on top of my regular working hours. Of course, that time should count as ‘proper work’ whatever your circumstances, but in my case, it literally replaces paid hours on other jobs. So, if it takes me a week or more likely, a week-and-a-half’s worth of hours, I lose that much paid income.

The time out: As a freelancer, I don’t get paid for the days I’m actually at the event, both the days there and the travel days. So that’s more lost income to factor into the cost.

Adding all of that together, counting the prep hours and the days out at my usual hourly rate, can easily come to the equivalent of a whole month’s income for a long event life IATEFL. Similarly, for a foreign trip with the extra travel and accommodation costs. And that’s not some theoretical calculation, it’s real lost income. If I give an unsponsored talk at IATEFL, that effectively means no income for April that year. And yes, I know it’s an investment in my business, but that’s a big hit when you’re already trying to support yourself on a part-time income.

Sponsors: All of which is why, where possible I try to speak on behalf of publishers. That doesn’t necessarily cover all the costs – amounts offered for prep rarely cover all the time and they usually only cover one night’s accommodation and one day’s ‘income’ – but it makes it more manageable. Speaking on behalf of a publisher though is contingent on you having recently worked on a project that they want to promote and on the talk fitting in with their marketing plans. Flagship new coursebook series are always going to attract more marketing budget than the kind of smaller, niche vocab materials I tend to work on!

Speaking for a sponsor also relies on the event accepting proposals for ‘promotional’ talks. I was looking at one event this week which specifically rules them out – which I understand, but also rules me out as a speaker.

So, yes, I’d love to come along to all those great events out there, but budgets for 2024 will likely mean just IATEFL and maybe one more.

An Eco Audit

With Cop26 all over the news, I’ve been thinking about how sustainable my business is. As a WFH freelancer, it’s quite difficult to separate the environmental footprint of my business from that of me as an individual, so there’s quite a bit of overlap, but here goes anyway.

Eco wins

👣 Working from home means I’m not commuting … which in turn, actually means that as a household, we don’t own a car. My partner is currently working from home for part of the week and commutes into the office on a Vespa when he needs to, which does use petrol but is probably pretty low impact. We haven’t owned a car for more than 15 years now. I mostly walk around locally and to travel further afield, I tend to use trains where I can. We are also members of a car club which allows us to book cars for odd trips that either involve transporting stuff or getting to places that are inaccessible by public transport. Pre-pandemic work travel within the UK was always by train. I haven’t been anywhere for the past 2 years, but I’m already planning how to get to IATEFL in Belfast next year by train and ferry.

🛒 The flexibility of being freelance at home also means I can be more conscious about how I shop. If I had a regular 9-to-5, I’d probably end up doing a couple of big supermarket shops a week with all the excess packaging that tends to entail. As it is, I can plan my days so that they often involve a short walk out to a local shop which not only provides a welcome break from my desk, but also means I can go into various small shops that enable me to cut down, at least to some extent, on waste. I get milk refills from the local deli and a lot of other basic groceries from a local zero waste shop where you take in your own containers for refills – of staples like rice, couscous, oil, spices, nuts as well as cleaning products and recycled loo roll. Working from home also means I can cook my own lunch, so no takeaway, over-packaged lunches or coffees.

✒ In terms of more direct work-related consumption, I do still print stuff out occasionally, but it’s something I do less and less and I get all my stationery – mostly just printer paper nowadays – from another local green stationery company – all recycled and delivered in often ingeniously reused packaging. I used to love my multi-coloured Muji pens, but a few years ago realized I could no longer justify all that single-use plastic, so have switched for the most part to using a fountain pen for which I just need to get ink cartridges. I also use pencils with refillable leads. 

Could do better

🔌 I can probably do a bit better on the small stuff day-to-day - printing a bit less, switching off lights, not leaving my laptop on standby.

✈ Pre-pandemic, I travelled abroad for work, for conferences and workshops, several times a year and that inevitably, involved flying. As someone who spends most of my working life at home on my own, I really value being able to meet ELT colleagues face-to-face. And especially as a materials writer, doing talks and workshops in different countries gives me the chance to meet teachers from different teaching contexts and get a feel for their attitudes to teaching and materials, the kind of context they teach in, the challenges they face, etc. - none of which I get from online events. So I’m loath to give up travelling altogether, but I’d definitely like to try and do much more by train where possible. I know several other ELT writers already do a lot of their European travel by train, so as and when I start getting opportunities to travel again, I’ll be tapping into their experience.

 

🏠 The biggie for me is probably heating. I live in an old house which is far from well insulated and has an old gas boiler for heating. As a chronic pain sufferer, cold really aggravates my condition, so I don’t scrimp on heating. Right now, it’s still quite mild here in the UK, so the heating is mostly on for a few hours morning and evening, but as soon as it gets colder, I won’t hesitate to leave it on all day. My office is one of the warmest rooms in the house as it’s upstairs, gets the most sun, and also has good double-glazed windows. The rest of the house though undoubtedly leaks heat. Better insulation is an ongoing project as finances allow and definitely a priority for next steps. I’d dearly love to replace the gas boiler with something less damaging. I’m taking a keen interest in the latest push towards air-source heat pumps for domestic heating and possible UK government proposals for funding, but I’m not yet sure whether one would be a practical solution for our house.

I’m sure there are other factors that contribute to my professional carbon footprint that I haven’t factored in - like the costs associated with internet use and, of course, the fact that many of the resources I create are paper-based! At least, though, I hope I’m moving in the right direction towards reducing my environmental impact and I’ll keep looking out for new ways to bring it down further.