I quit my caregiving job in may (partly) because everyone from my parents down to my prescribing nurse all listened to me talk about it for maybe two minutes before pointing out that toxic jobs are a thing and it's okay to look else where. I've been coasting on some pretty good savings and just took some freelance work (with paid training) from a co-worker of my brother's to heavily proof read, edit, format and publish a series of articles. My problem is that I have a really hard time justifying everything I do as work. Suddenly can't type in real english for a bit? Stop the timer. Can't think of a word and need to ask? Stop the timer. Looking up html how tos? You guessed it. Then I end up only having a few hours on my timer and it looks like I haven't done that much work. I've even been encouraged by the guy I'm doing it for not to worry too much about the time, but that's still really hard for me. Something that really set my anxiety off was when I let him know this afternoon that proof reading and editing wasn't as simple as the "checking for missing letters or replacing a word" (in fact it seems to be more like rewriting entire sentances / restructuring a paragraph to make sense kind of work) and his answer was "Just go faster then =)" It was like an electric jolt up my nerves, and while I handled it by saying I could definitely lower how much editing was being done and leave it mostly as is (he thought about it and said not to worry about the time, that he wanted it to sound professional, etc, in a very friendly way) I'm still, 4 hours later, having little arm tingles and a vague disquiet. Because what if I'm actually just dallying / not doing anything useful / not being efficient enough / etc. Any advice or sympathy head pats are appreciated, although I'll mention that any version of "Have you tried just not thinking that way?" has historically been pretty unhelpful :p
I think you know you're being too hard on yourself but cannot justify the time-outs needed to do the job as perfectly as you want. The point is that things like looking up words is part of work. No-one is expected to know everything about anything. The goal is to know where and how to find things out so that the job gets done. And acquiring that meta is the process you're going through. You are being paid to do a job and that includes paying for your knowledge and abilities as well as the actual product. When you pay a silversmith for a brooch you are not paying just for the silver or even the time taken to make it.
I'll add that your client is a twerp if he thinks "just go faster" is a solution to editing taking time. It takes time to do well and it's absolutely necessary for a polished result. You're not wasting time by doing a good job of editing!
Thanks guys, that's pretty much what I needed to hear. I also need to let my thoughts stew a lot, so gaming while I'm thinking about work tends to lead to sporadic work I don't remember to time. Freelance is awesome, but it's hard on the nerves sometimes lol
When I'm programming I work for a while then stop to let the brain puzzle over a problem in its own time. Then go back and carry on, refreshed and (usually) with a solution ready to spring forth. Same with crosswords. Same with modelling - that's model trains not posing in the nude! It's how the brain works; don't fight it!
I am also a freelance editor/typesetter/etc, and these totally count as work. Like, if you need to take a half-hour break because your mind has gone fuzzy? Sure, don't count that. (But also try not to beat yourself up for it - I know it can feel frustrating as shit, but breaks are necessary.) But working out how to do the things you need to do, whether that's looking them up, asking people, trying a few methods, or anything else, definitely all count as work. can confirm: this is douchey behaviour on your client's part. Proofreading and editing totally does involve rewriting and restructuring a lot of the time, and the response to that is 'good, I'm glad it will look good' or 'I'm sorry, I cannot afford substantial editing, could you just give it a quick check for typos?'. 'Do this whole job but do it faster so I can (presumably) pay you less' is pretty unreasonable behaviour. (Also, your response to that sounds spot on! Reassuring people that you can spend less time doing XYZ but making sure to explicitly say that that will mean that less work is done is definitely the way to go.)
