Self-employment stories – Part I: My story

Happy New Year! It’s been a wet and foggy one here in Rutland so far, but luckily not very cold – the first snowdrops are already emerging!

Self-employment stories – Part I: My story

In October last year I visited the University of Exeter to speak to their students about my experiences of setting up and running a successful self-employed business as part of the university’s Global Entrepreneurship Week. While preparing my talk, I spent a lot of time reflecting upon my experience of self-employment – how I’d ended up becoming self-employed, the main challenges I’d faced, the most valuable lessons I’d learned. The students told me they found hearing about my own experiences really helpful, so I’m going to be sharing them in this post. Here is my self-employment story (scroll to the bottom if you just want my top tips)!

My way into self-employment

I grew up in England, Canada and Germany as a bilingual native speaker of English and German. After finishing school I went to university, which I enjoyed so much I decided I wanted to take a PhD and then get a lecturing job. However, once I had become a lecturer,

I realised I wasn’t enjoying myself. In particular, I wasn’t enjoying the lack of freedom to decide what and how I wanted to teach, the huge amounts of paperwork, the constantly changing policies and procedures, and the overall dependence on government whims for funding. I had assumed that what attracted me to academia was the ability to engage with literature, theory and the arts. But now that I was missing freedom and independence, I realised these were actually far more important to me than my subject. Was there a something I could do instead that would give me the self-sufficiency I longed for? Suddenly it seemed very obvious: throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate years I had always worked as a translator on the side as a way of earning extra pocket money. As a native speaker of English and German, I kept getting asked to do this – I didn’t have to look for clients. Some clients I had even worked with regularly for several years. Might it be possible to start doing this kind of work again, earning enough money to make a living?

Starting out

I decided to take the plunge and switched to part-time work so I could earn some regular income while building up my translation and editing business. Given that all of my professional experience was in academia and the cultural sector, I decided it made sense to specialise in this area.

I contacted all my old clients as well as my university colleagues and let them know I was looking for work. I also asked them for testimonials that I could use on the website and marketing materials I was planning to create. I joined the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the UK’s professional association for translators, which gave me access to a professional network of colleagues who proved a fount of knowledge concerning the industry. As I felt I had very few “business skills” as such, I took a 6-month group course on self-employment called “Turn your Passion to Profit” with Corrina Gordon-Barnes, a specialist business coach – probably my single most useful step! I also took an “Orientation Course” organised by ITI for newcomers to the industry, which again is something I would highly recommend. I attended several free workshops on self-employment and taxes run by my local HMRC office. I also had a professional website built for my business. This was comparatively expensive but really paid off – I still get compliments for this website years down the line and it really helped me to stand out and look professional.

Becoming established

There were still a few bad patches in the first 6 months, but then – almost overnight – things started to pick up; I gained a couple of good regular clients; old clients kept coming back; I got recommended on. I started making money. In fact, everything went so well that I was able to quit lecturing after a year and a quarter, not 2 years as originally planned. I spent a lot of time building a professional profile (networking, blogging, publishing in trade journals, presenting at local and national business events). This usually doesn’t cost anything but time and is a very effective way of “showing up” – becoming visible to your colleagues and target market. I now find that most of my work comes from referrals and repeat customers; they basically do my marketing for me. Today I am in the very lucky position to not have been without a project on the go for a very long time, and despite the challenges of self-employment (my particular demons: dealing with my terror of “money issues”; learning how much my work was actually worth and charging that; managing periods with a very high workload; learning how to respond to criticism; learning how to say “no” to clients), I now can’t imagine working in any other way.

My top tips for self-employment:

•       You need to be able to motivate yourself.

•       Do something you are passionate about – it makes it easier to motivate yourself!

•       Define a clear niche or “tribe” for your service or product (and make sure it really exists).

•       Get support – you don’t have to do it alone (professional networks, mentors, mastermind groups).

•       Have a financial safety net in place, at least for the first while (savings, loan, part-time work).

•       Marketing is all about becoming visible to your “tribe” – find where they hang out (in real life or online) and let them see you.

•       Making your clients happy so they recommend you on is the most sustainable form of marketing.

•       Keep showing up – networking, marketing, sharing your expertise in whichever          way.

In next month’s second installment of this blog post, I’m going to share the self-employment stories of colleagues from a whole range of businesses and sectors – do check in again for their experiences and advice! And if you’ve got any tips to add to my list in the meantime, please leave a comment below!

Why I'm no longer offering translations into German

As I write, I am gazing not at my beautiful garden in Rutland, but at my sister-in-law's beautiful garden in Upper Bavaria. The view goes out across a meadow and a little stream overhung with willows, and behind that the ground rises in fields covered with corn. I had forgotten how much corn they grow here (as animal fodder, not for human consumption)! I am currently spending a few days in Bavaria with family before heading off to Vienna for the annual "Internationales Texttreff" (meeting of the German-language women's network Texttreff). It's nice to be back!

Why I'm no longer offering translations into German

One of the beauties of self-employment is that often we can work from anywhere (such as Bavaria instead of Rutland). Another is that our businesses can grow, develop and change as we ourselves do. If we realise that something is no longer working for us, we don't have to go through a lengthy application and justification process - we can change it. I've recently decided to make such a change in regard to the language combinations I offer.

I grew up in the UK, Canada and Germany as a bilingual native speaker of both English and German. When I started translating as a student, I worked both from German into English and from English into German (I also studied translating both ways at university). Amongst translators, it is regarded as good professional practice to translate only into one's native language, but as a native speaker of two languages I have always defended my ability to translate into both English and German. However, recently I have found myself becoming increasingly uneasy about offering translations into German. Here's why:

• I feel increasingly out of touch with everyday language and culture. I lived in Germany for 15 years, went to school and university there, am married to a German and do in fact speak and read German every day. However, it's been ten years now since I actually lived in Germany, and I feel I no longer have my finger on the "pulse" of the language (to use a German expression). For most of my work - which is academic - this might not seem too much of an issue, as academic German is a very formal, resolutely old-fashioned language that changes very slowly. Nevertheless, I have felt increasingly that my German has lost its spark, a certain "aliveness" without which texts feel boring. And I don't want to produce boring texts, even if they are accurate translations.
• All of my creative work is in English. I don't think this loss of my German "spark" is a coincidence. For the last ten years, I have neither been required nor felt inspired to write creatively in German (by which I mean actively producing content in German). By contrast, I have written essays, a book, poetry and blogs in English. English quite simply is the language I feel creative in - including in my translations. In English, I get a real sense of "flow" when translating; my translations into German feel a lot more laborious, even though the outcome may be perfectly acceptable.
• It doesn't make financial sense. Because I feel less attuned to and less creative in German, it takes much longer - in fact, significantly longer - for me to produce a translation into German. However, I can't charge significantly more per word for that translation to compensate for the additional time. It stands to reason that the obvious thing to do in financial terms is to concentrate on producing high-quality English translations as I can complete more of these in shorter time, earning more income.

So, from now on, I am going to be concentrating on German-to-English work. I will still work with my current English-to-German clients (who constitute a relatively small part of my client base anyway) for the time being, but any new enquiries for translations into German will be referred on to trusted colleagues. I do want to experiment privately with "playing" and writing more creatively in German - who knows, my "spark" may come back - but for now, English is going to be my only target language.

What are your thoughts on language combinations and offering translation both out of and into a language? Have any of you had similar thoughts or experiences regarding your languages? I'd be very interested to hear them - why not leave a comment below?

Proofreading – what’s involved?

Perhaps surprisingly, August is one of the noisiest months here in the country! The farmers are working from dawn till dusk (and beyond) to get the harvest in, and for the past weeks, the combine harvesters have been rumbling away constantly in the distance. Like the farmers, I’ve been working most of August – one of the big benefits of being a freelancer is that you can choose to space your holidays out and avoid being off work at the same time as everyone else.

Proofreading – what’s involved?

At this time of year, I routinely receive requests for proofreading from people with dissertations or final theses that need to be submitted by the beginning of the new academic year. I often find myself explaining what my proofreading services involve, and so I thought this might be a good opportunity to summarise what I do when I proofread a text, and share some tips for things to try before hiring a proofreader.

When I proofread, this usually involves three rounds of going through a text.

·      Round One: A first, extremely thorough read on my computer, where I make corrections to grammatical and spelling errors in the text. I also make small amendments to the text to ensure it “flows” better, and insert comments where I think more major intervention is required – for example, if the argument does not make sense, or information is missing (such as references) that I am unable to locate. If requested, I will also adapt references and citation to a particular style. Usually these changes are made using the “Track Changes” function in Word. If I am sent a PDF document, I will highlight passages that need correction and insert the correction as a comment.

·      Round Two: I print out a hard copy of a “clean” version of the text (i.e., one where all my suggestions have been accepted) and read it again on paper. It is always surprising how many more errors I am able to find when I read a text on paper rather than on a screen! I write corrections and comments into the hard copy by hand, and then return to the computer to add them to the original file.

·      Round Three: By now, the text is usually in pretty good shape. I now use computer magic to go through the text again with a spellchecker. This will often pick out a few last typos. Sometimes I will search for particular terms to make sure they are used consistently throughout the text (e.g. “dataset” versus “data set” – the spellchecker won’t pick up something like this). Last of all, I run a search for multiple spaces – these are often hard to see on screen and are often not obvious on paper, either, especially if the text is justified. Once all of this is done, I scan the text one last time just to make sure of everything.

My top 4 tips for DIY proofreading

Some of these steps can be applied to a text before passing it on to a professional proofreader and may in fact reduce the overall cost of your proofreading bill.

·      Number One: Run a spellcheck. It’s so simple it almost sounds stupid. But computer tools like spellcheckers really can be a big help, picking up on a number of mistakes you may not have noticed. They can be especially useful when you’re writing in a language that is not your native tongue. Remember: If your word processing programme is set to a language other than the one you are writing in, you will have to change the settings of your spellchecker.

·      Number Two: Run a search for double spaces. The convention in printed English these days (including on the web) is not to have more than one space after a word or a punctuation mark in a running text (back in the days of typewriters, it was common to leave a double space after a full stop to provide a clear break between sentences). Double spaces tend to sneak in when you copy and paste parts of text. Run a search to help find and eliminate them.

·      Number Three: Print your text out and read it in hard copy. Nothing reveals mistakes like a paper copy of your text. Yes, it means you have to use up extra toner and extra paper. Yes, it’s going to take a bit more of your time. But it really will be worth it.

·      Number Four: Choose whether you are using British or American English…and stick to it! British English and American English are the two main variants of the English language, and as a writer you will probably be asked to use one or the other. If you haven’t been given any specification, you should choose for yourself which variant you prefer to use. Regardless which one you end up with, it is important not to confuse the two. Change the setting on your spellchecker to make sure you pick up on the differences! (You can find a useful list of differences on Wikipedia, and if you want something more thorough, the Economist Style Guide which devotes an entire section to the differences between UK and US.)

Here’s to many successful proofreading endeavours and a good start to the autumn!

A Hot Topic: Branding

We are actually having a heatwave! This is one of those times I find myself (once more) deeply grateful to be living in the countryside where it doesn’t get quite as relentlessly hot as in town and there are plenty of shady places for both humans and animals!

A Hot Topic: Branding

Throughout this hot month I’ve been thinking a lot about a pretty hot topic: branding. Before I became self-employed, “branding” was a word I associated primarily with cattle farming and with big, slick multimillion corporations. However, once I set up my translation business, I realised very quickly that not only did I need a clearly defined target market – I also needed a way of becoming visible to that particular market in such a way that they would remember me when a need for my services arose. I needed a brand!

Initially, my idea of what this “brand” was to be like was fairly hazy. However, as I worked with a lot of clients in the creative and cultural industries, I knew I wanted a website and business materials that reflected that creative flair in a way that was both professional (I wanted to be taken seriously as an expert in my field) and personal (I wanted to build strong relationships with my clients as individuals, not just as potential sources of income). I was pretty confident that I could produce the words to convey this effectively, but I needed more than just words – and here I enlisted the help of my artist sister Catherine Hiley, who produced a series of beautiful images that I felt captured what I wanted to convey to a T. I then worked with Astrid Nielsch, another artist and web designer, to create a website that incorporated these images and my text, reflecting my core values of creativity, professionalism and personal service. I am still thrilled with the result, several years down the line!

However, since then I have learnt a lot more about what a “brand” is. This month, my thoughts on the subject received fresh input in a brilliant workshop led by creative branding expert Jo Bradshaw of Minestrone Soul. Many of us solopreneurs feel self-conscious (or downright megalomaniac) when thinking about creating a “brand” – isn’t that something we should be leaving to the really big players? However, Jo encourages her clients to think about branding as something that is not really about them so much as about their “tribe”, or target client base. “A lot of marketing is really about providing a mirror so your tribe can see themselves and feel witnessed,” she writes. “Think about branding as the coat hook next to the mirror. It’ll give you and your people a sense of coming ‘home.’” A brand helps to reassure our clients that they have come to the right place for their needs.

Image © Catherine Hiley – www.cahiley.com

A brand also needs to reflect our core values, as “when your ideal client lands on your website (or lands face to face with you), they actually have a real need to know that you see eye-to-eye”, writes Jo. Ideally, it will convey your own unique strengths and skills, traditionally known as “unique selling points”. Jo charmingly defined USPs as “unique squiggly places”, comparing our strengths and skills to the squiggly shape of an enzyme travelling round the body looking for its ideal fit. Obviously, the more clearly defined our USPs, the easier it is for an ideal fit (our ideal client) to be found! 

Bearing all this in mind, I undertook a first miniature attempt at “rebranding” some of my business materials this month – in particular, my business cards! My old cards were home-designed and printed for me (very kindly) for free by the print room at the college where I used to teach. They were fine for starting out, but by now I felt they no longer conveyed the level of professionalism and class my brand required. Rather than use a cheap online printing service, I decided to work with local bespoke printers Spiegl Press (who I knew from a local business networking group) and we have worked together on a beautiful design that includes one of my sister’s images. The final results have not been produced yet, but I am confident they will be both creative and professional with a personal touch – exactly the qualities I want my “brand” to convey!

Some further resources on this topic:

• Jo Bradshaw at Minestrone Soul is a source of inspiring information when it comes to creative branding! Thanks, Jo, for letting me share some of your insights in this blog post.
• Valeria Aliperta of Rainy London Translations has written a very popular series of articles on branding for translators in Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s Bulletin, and her website and social media pages contain many excellent examples of successful branding.
• Two translator colleagues whose websites I consider great examples of brands that work well are Megan Onions of Speechmarks Translation  and Sarah Appleby of Sarah Appleby Translations.

Does your translation business work for you?

I always feel this is a particularly green time of year; the colour of the new leaves has ripened into a deeper green and the grass in the fields and gardens is thick and lush, needing to be kept down with regular mowing – or grazing! The long evenings are beautiful and everything seems more energetic as we move towards midsummer. I am currently coming to the end of a long book translation project and am looking forward to moving on to the next exciting things I have lined up.

Does your translation business work for you?

Over the past weeks, I have been thinking about two statements by colleagues I heard at the recent ITI conference. One stated she worked between 60 and 70 hours a week “as she liked her job”. Another colleague mentioned that she never goes longer than an hour without looking at her work emails and even checks them on her phone when out shopping or socialising so she doesn’t miss out on potential jobs. The implicit assumptions are that a) if you like your job you spend most of your waking hours working and b) you have to be constantly on call, otherwise you run the risk of not getting enough work (or not enough high-quality work).

Well, I disagree. In fact, I disagree completely and wholeheartedly! I’m not saying you can’t work that way if that’s what you enjoy. But it is by no means compulsory to work 70 hours a week to be successful, nor do you need to be at the beck and call of your clients all the time in order to get good work. In fact, I think that if you are working like this, one of the most likely reasons is that you have the wrong clients. You have clients who:

• Don’t pay you enough, which means you have to work longer hours to make ends meet. 
• Aren’t interested in you as an individual service provider – their main priorities are price and speed of turnaround.

What you need is:

• Clients who pay you a decent price for your services so that you can decide whether to go on working till midnight because you want to – or have a free evening because that’s what you prefer.
• Clients who want to work with you, rather than just anyone they think can do the job.

If your clients want to work with you, they are usually willing to work to your schedule as far as possible. They respect that your time is limited and let you know in advance when they would like to send you some of their work. I have clients who often give me several months’ notice for projects they want me to work on and currently have work booked into 2014. If your clients’ priority is working with you, it won’t matter whether you respond to their emails within 15 minutes, an hour, or even 12 hours. You won’t need to check your phone every 10 minutes – unless, of course, you want to!

Illustration © C.A. Hiley

I feel quite strongly about this as one of the main reasons I left my lecturing job and set up my own business was that I wanted to get away from long work hours that left me exhausted and people who expected me to be constantly accessible. At the beginning of my translation career, I was told I needed to invest in a smartphone so I could respond immediately to offers of work. For the record: In my whole translating career so far, I have not had a single job that I got because I responded quickly (and can only think of one I didn’t get because I didn’t respond immediately). I soon realised that in my target market, this is simply not the way things work: people spend lots of time preparing their texts, and because they are highly invested in their work, they care who translates it and leave sufficient time for it to be done well. And this means that I in turn am able to work in a way that is sustainable for me.

What is sustainable will differ from one translator to the next, but whatever it is, I just want to affirm it is possible to build a translation business that works for you.

Wishing you all lots of warm midsummer sunshine,

'No regrets, none at all, I wouldn’t change it for anything, you know.'

I have been enjoying the merry month of May and its green leaves and blossom, despite the fact we’ve been having what the Germans call “Aprilwetter” – changeable weather of the kind you’d expect in April! There’s been a lot going on this month: a lot of interesting work, the conference of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, and the launch of a book that I was lucky enough to be involved in over the past six months.

Destination UK - 'No regrets, none at all, I wouldn’t change it for anything, you know.'

While I am lucky enough to enjoy the vast majority of my work, now and again a project comes along that touches and engages me on a whole range of levels and ends up with a very special place in my heart. Photographer Marion Trestler’s  beautiful book Destination UK was one of these. An Austrian living and working in London, Marion travelled the length and breadth of Britain over a number of years to document the stories of Austrian women who immigrated to the UK between 1945 the the early 1960s. It is not widely known today that following World War II, the British and Austrian governments entered into a formal agreement that Austria would supply young unmarried women to work in the British industry, mostly in the cotton mills of Derbyshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Following this first wave of immigrants, many further young Austrian women came to the UK to work as domestic helpers, nurses or au pairs. Many of them married British men and had families; others recognised there was little for them in postwar Austria and decided to stay in a country they felt offered them better chances of making a good life for themselves. Marion took photographic portraits of the women and recorded interviews in which they shared their experiences, thoughts and feelings. She writes: “My intent has been to paint an authentic portrait of each woman, in pictures and words, and to create a tribute to each of them whilst preserving a part of contemporary history in the form of a book. “ 

I became involved in this project both as a language editor and a translator once the selection of quotes had been completed. It was vital that whoever was involved have an understanding not just of English and German, but also of Austrian dialect and culture – luckily, as I grew up in Bavaria not far from the Austrian border (and have a half-Austrian mother-in-law and a Viennese godmother), I fitted the bill! When editing the interviews, our concern was to “smooth” the oral language into a form that would be easily readable but nonetheless preserve the immediacy and authenticity of each woman’s voice. As some interviewees switched frequently between English and German, we also had to decide on where to translate quotes or parts of quotes and where to leave them. Our little team – Marion, myself and Karina Matejcek of KAMACO – quickly established a method of working on the files that suited us all (thanks the gods for Dropbox!). Excitement grew as our work neared completion and the graphic designers produced the proofs of the book, which contained not only the interviews and Marion’s photographs, but also pictures of the interviewees as young women and reproductions of their immigration documents as well a scholarly introduction by Dr. Jill Lewis of the University of Swansea.

Marion and I met in London on April 18^th and she gave me a first copy of Destination UK, hot off the press. It was an emotional moment! I always feel that being given a book you have worked so hard on is a bit like being given a newborn baby. It was thrilling to leaf through the pages and see everything on paper for the first time. But there was still work to be done – for there was to be an official book launch and exhibition of Marion’s photos in Vienna in mid-May and another exhibition planned for London for November. So a press folder needed to be put together in both English and German and blurbs for the exhibition and the sponsors written in both languages. It was a rush, but finally everything was completed and the Vienna launch took place on May 16^th.

So what was it that touched me most about this project? For one, I had the opportunity to collaborate with some wonderful people (thank you, Marion and Karina!). But above all I was fascinated by the stories told by the women themselves. As someone who has moved around a lot, I recognised some of the themes that appeared, such as intense homesickness ('Heimweh, that can be an illness, it can make you ill') as well as the sense of freedom gained from moving to a different country. I found myself smiling at former au pairs’ descriptions of Swinging London versus staid 1960s Vienna. I was moved to tears by the misery and poverty faced by some of these women back in their home country during and after the War; for many of them, the wages they earned in the cotton mills were the first pay they had ever received. Some of them were forced to leave sweethearts and children behind; others came and found sweethearts and husbands. All of them worked incredibly hard to build new lives for themselves – and luckily, most of them found the British to be friendly and welcoming. I can only echo Marion’s words when she says: “All these women have my greatest admiration.”

To celebrate the launch of the book and exhibition (showing until June 8^th at Galerie base-level, Heinrichsgasse 4, Eingang Rudolfsplatz 13, 1010 Vienna), I am giving away a free copy of Destination UK (normal price £25)! In order to enter, please leave me a comment at the end of this blog post. I will pick a winner from the entries on June 14^th and will post the book out to the lucky person!

Procrastination and how to overcome it

I'm sure everyone in the U.K. is sharing my relief that at long last we have some warmer weather! I'm enjoying the long, light evenings now we have switched to summer time, and walking back home tonight after a yoga class at the village hall I was even pleasantly surprised by a few warm drops of spring rain. Every roadside and garden here seems to be full of cheery daffodils!

Procrastination and how to overcome it

I had originally planned to write about something completely different this month, but as the days passed and I did not feel inspired in the slightest I have decided that in fact writing about resistance to writing and to working might be a more appropriate subject.

All of us who are self-employed or whose work is largely self-directed will have battled at some point with the dread enemy procrastination. When there is noone else in charge breathing down our necks it is often tempting to put off things that need to be done until the last possible moment. And although I'm normally reasonably good at not procrastinating, the fact that this blog post has been so long in coming shows me that I definitely need to think about the problem.

So, why do we do it? Quite simple: we're afraid. We're afraid that carrying out the task at hand will either involve something unpleasant or possibly have unpleasant consequences. And while the thing we're afraid of can be something as simple as we'll not get another sunny day until next year so I'd better get outside and make good use of this one or something as profound as if I complete and submit this paper it might get rejected, which will confirm to myself and everyone around me I'm a failure and will never get tenure, fear is ultimately what it boils down to.

What happens if we do it? Again, it's quite simple: we don't get important stuff done as quickly as we could. This means that paradoxically we spend more time on the unpleasant task than if we were just able to focus on it, and have less time for other, more enjoyable things, like spending time in the sun. Even if we distract ourselves from the unpleasant task at hand by doing something more enjoyable – I'll just play one more round of Spider Solitaire – we're probably not really enjoying the game of solitaire as much as we would if we had finished the unpleasant task first and were free to play solitaire for as long as we liked. Ultimately, we're focusing neither on what we have to do nor what we want to do, which means our brain is stuck in some kind of limbo instead of being in the present moment. Furthermore, this lack of focus means we are actually more likely to bring about precisely the unpleasant results we wish to avoid!

Illustration © C.A. Hiley

How can we avoid doing it? This is where it gets interesting and more complicated. Everyone will probably have their own techniques (which I'd love to hear about – do leave me a comment below if you have any to share!), but these are some that work for me.

Focusing on the real problem: Instead of "Argh, I really don't want to translate yet another 2000 words on XXX", listen in and hear that little voice saying, "I'm scared this client might not like my work and might complain and I might not get any more work from them but I really need another regular client." For me, acknowledging the fear always helps.

Focusing on what the client needs: Think about why the client needs your service. What would the consequence for them be if you didn't do your work well or even didn't do it at all? A sloppy translation or proofreading job might, in the absolutely worst case, cost one of my clients a publication in an important journal, or make the difference between minor and major corrections in their PhD viva. Focusing on what's in the work for others rather than myself can often be really motivating for me.

 Reward yourself: Sometimes I promise myself a reward once I've completed necessary work I didn't feel like doing. This might be something like going for a lovely walk, going out for a meal, or even buying a treat of some kind. Really celebrate when you have managed to get a difficult task done instead of just moving on to the next thing (if you want more inspiring reading on the importance of celebration, here's a great blog post by the fabulous Corrina Gordon-Barnes).

The power hour: This is one I picked up from another brilliant lady, Natalie Fee (she's written a fantastic blog post on procrastination - read it here). You set aside just one hour – short enough not to feel threatening, but long enough to get some serious work done if you focus. Really commit to working just that one hour, with no distractions – no emailing, no web surfing, no social media, no Spider Solitaire. Even though I know from experience this one works, I'm still surprised each and every time how much I get done!

And lo and behold, just by systematically setting out my thoughts on procrastination and why I do it, I've completed the dreaded blog post! Not every piece of work I feel resistance to is so easily overcome, but the same solutions can be applied to all of them.

Wishing you all productive, efficient working days as the days grow longer,