Slowing us down
Posted By: my take on this on 2008-08-25
In Reply to: Money?? - Very Confused
If one person is getting great line counts, and she goes on vacation, the account may suffer while she's off. If instead two people are getting mediocre line counts, and one goes on vacation, the account does not take as hard a hit.
A phenomena that easily leads to burnout is being punished for competency by one's employer. I've run into it in other industries, but it happens here too. The more you know and the better and faster you are, the more crap work they'll send your way. If you have a good work ethic and pride yourself on conquering challenges, they'll use it against you by giving you more difficult accounts/jobs, because they know you won't wimp out and complain or quit like others might. The more efficient I become, the more extra difficult work I get. The slower people that goof off are rewarded for that with a light easy work load. Its not very fair, but its certainly been a trend in my experience.
ESL is a particular thorn, because as someone else said, everyone hates to do it. I have one dictator in particular on one of my secondaries that is just impossible. Our QA person chides us for not getting him right, sending snotty emails that we must take the time to look up his old reports, and that it doesn't take much time to do so, even though SHE often has to leave the same blanks in the report that I left, because she can't understand him either. Its a case of the emperor's new clothes - everyone knows this person is impossible, but they think by guilt-tripping us into killing ourselves over each report, somehow they'll get done. Never, never will they tell the doc HE is the problem and its his own fault his reports are such a mess. Maybe ONE report doesn't take that much time, but we don't get just one report. And yes, many reports do take a lot of extra time, and often it doesn't matter how much time you spend, he's simply indecipherable. Still, they'd prefer to try to make us feel incompetent and keep the client, while we all lose money because of him.
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Slowing down Dictaphone
When I used it, it was #4, but you'll need to check with your supervisor to make sure that is the right code. Then you do ## to go back to regular speed. This worked on my current transcriber also.
I'm slowing giving up my perfectionism...SM
in that I won't search and search and search for a new/unfamiliar term. I'll do a quick search in my books and Google and maybe ask on the Word Board, but if nothing comes up, I flag it. I used to spend WAY too much time wanting to find these things, mainly because I'm pretty anal, which is generally a good thing in MT but can end up costing you $$$!
Not necessarily...metabolism slowing...
as we get older is a much more likely culprit. At 50, our metabolism is on average 50% lower than at age 16. That is why when we are young we can lose weight easily and rapidly, but as we age it's a tremendous struggle. Exercise is the key, as it not only burns calories but revs up the metabolism for hours following.
I presume you are slowing it down on your player - sm
when you transcribe, if not, obviously try that. If that does not help then either just to the best you can, alert whoever you are sending the work into of the blanks (and why), and just handle it that way. If you just don't want the hassle of them anymore then give them 2 weeks notice that you are dropping them since they cannot seem to follow a simple request and make it so you can turn into them a quality product. With my 1 puny account, I always email them while files have any blanks, and why. I am dealing with the Drs. personal asst. (not the office manager) and she loves that I do this (when I have to), the previous MT did not....just sent it in with the blanks with no heads up or explanation. Good luck!
Slowing down and listening ahead
These are two different things. You have to practice them separately, then eventually merge them.
As for slowing down, that should be the easiest. It means to key at a speed slow enough that you make no typos. None whatsoever--not even one.
Just practice typing one sentence until you can key it correctly without a single error. Go on to a paragraph. You'll settle on a speed that works for you.
You may feel that you are typing s l o o o o w l y, and this may frustrate you, but bear with it for a bit. Practice this every day, slowly and smoothly, giving each letter the same amount of time. No machine-gun rat-a-tat-tat. No speeding up and slowing down.
Your goal is to maintain the same boring, monotonous rate on and on and on. It shouldn't be tiring at all. You'll find it easy and restful, but you'll make better progress because you won't have to stop to fix anything.
To learn to listen ahead, you'll need to pretend that you're working on a typewriter. If you have an actual typewriter, use that. Otherwise, just assume that you CANNOT correct anything. What you type has to stay on the page forever, so it had better be right the first time.
Take a practice report. Listen to the first entire sentence without typing anything. Hold it in your head. Now type it from memory. Do the whole report that way.
You'll have trouble with whole sentences at first. You might have to do just phrases, then longer phrases, then work up to sentences.
Practice that perhaps an hour a day for a week or so. At some point, the process may click for you and you'll figure out the point behind it.
Once you can do whole sentences, you can start typing while listening. Listen to the first sentence, but this time start typing it when you have heard half or all of it. You can pause the tape momentarily at the end of the sentence if you need to, but you should be able to type continuously.
Listen listen listen . . . listentype listentype listentype type type type listentype listentype listentype type type type, etc.
It takes practice, but it's worth it.
Strike in Pakistan slowing down offshored work here. Just another example of offshore
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