Kill the Mistress – How to Stop Working and Enjoy Your Time Off
As any court reporter will tell you, the work day never stops. Even after a full day of court, deposition or hearings we still have to go home and continue editing, scoping and proofreading. When does it stop? Never. Or until you retire or run away to the circus.
Most of you have home offices where all this “homework” gets done; right? I typically sit in front of the TV with my laptop and continue to do work-related stuff after hours. And all that is fine for a certain amount of time. Say, Monday through Friday. But what is the net benefit to your quality of life if it extends past that? What about Saturdays and Sundays and holidays? At a certain point you have to force yourself to stop working and – as I’ve rather crudely coined it – Kill the Mistress.
(If you’re not into mistresses, insert your own cruel master here.)
Other Names The Mistress Goes By:
- Getting ahead
- Catching up
- Work
- Scoping
- Editing
- Proofreading
- Marking exhibits
- Billing
- Invoicing
- Writing Collection Letters
A Rampant Mistress Will Cause You To Be:
- Constantly tired
- Constantly irritable
- Never enjoying your family
- Never content in the moment
- Joyless
- Wrinkled in the forehead
- Overweight
- Overwhelmed with work
- Underwhelmed with life
What Things Could You Do More Effectively If You Killed Your Mistress?
- Enjoy down time
- Appreciate your kids instead of them being annoying
- Have a peaceful, non-work environment during off hours
- Actually have “off hours”
- Exercise
- Look sexier and less stressed
Ways To Kill The Mistress
- Turn off all technology after hours
- Make plans to do something else, thus leaving no option for anything else
- Utilize every possible moment during work hours to avoid even having to do “homework”
Final Questions
- Could you learn to scope at the time of the job instead of doing it later?
- Could you bring proofreading with you in case the parties are late?
- Could you hire a scopist so you can relax more?
- Could you beef up your realtime skills so you have fewer untranslates and have to spend less time cleaning them up?
KILL THE MISTRESS!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
