Sunday 27 June 2021

My 60-minute writing routine: 3 surprising takeaways

How to find the time? We all want to focus more on meaningful activities – especially activities that put us in the blissful, elusive state known as flow. But how much time do we allow ourselves to pursue our very own flow activities?

 

We all want to focus more on meaningful activities – especially
activities that put us into a flow state

 

One of my flow activities is writing. I’ve always enjoyed it, yet I’d always struggled to make enough time for it. At some point, I therefore decided I wanted to do more of it, and I established a writing routine.

I now spend 60 minutes on a Saturday and a Sunday morning on writing: to draft blog articles by hand. To publish a blog article, complete with graphics. To translate a blog article into German. To jot down ideas. Or to engage in other writing, such as writing an email that I feel a lot of thought needs to go into. An hour to myself – something that was initially hard to fit into a weekend. 

 

I’m not proposing that something similar might work for you, too, but would instead like to highlight a few surprising insights which I gained following the creation of my 60-minute writing routine:


1. Scheduling leisure time

I’m not advocating that we should plan every single minute of our leisure time, yet I’ve found it a surprisingly effective way to more effortlessly fit in activities that we enjoy doing. It’s a time management technique which I recommend. Scheduling leisure time meticulously does not mean you enjoy it less – on the contrary!


2. Deriving pleasure from anticipation

It’s been argued that the intensity of feelings of anticipation ahead of a pleasurable activity is similar to the intensity of feelings felt during the actual activity. This is a simple yet powerful insight: schedule an activity, and it‘ll give you something to look forward to! There’s pleasure to be gained from anticipation.


3. The correlation between time constraints and creativity

I have found the effects of setting myself a 60-minute time limit astounding. An hour goes by quickly; yet because I’m finding myself under self-imposed time pressure, I often come up with good turns of phrase and solutions to language problems in my writing more quickly. It is true that self-imposed time constraints can stimulate your creativity!



Self-imposed time constraints often stimulate your creativity


 
If you’re looking for a new way to maximise your work and/or leisure time, this blog post will be for you. In it I describe noteworthy insights which I gained following the creation of my 60-minute writing routine.

 

 

A note to all blog subscribers:

Google recently announced that it would shut down some features of its Feedburner infrastructure, including the popular Feedburner email subscription service, in July 2021. Following the deprecation, the "Follow this blog by email" widget on my blog will no longer be working from next month.

If you wish to continue receiving email updates from me, please resubscribe to "The Minimalist Translator" using the new email subscription widget at the top of my blog.

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Saturday 19 June 2021

Important message to all blog subscribers

Google recently announced that it would shut down some features of its Feedburner infrastructure, including the popular Feedburner email subscription service, in July 2021.

Following the deprecation, the "Follow this blog by email" widget on my blog will no longer be working from next month.

I have therefore integrated a new email subscription widget into my blog, using AddThis and MailChimp to set it up. The new widget will pop up at the top of the blog.

 

If you wish to continue receiving email updates from me, please resubscribe to "The Minimalist Translator" using this new email subscription widget.

Remember you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the "Unsubscribe" link in the subscription email. Alternatively, you can always access my content directly at https://hippe-heisler.blogspot.com or by following me on Twitter.


Thank you for following my blog!





Saturday 12 June 2021

Advanced googling for translators: WRG Take 5 Talk on 1 June 2021

How do translators go about finding correct and reliable words and phrases for use in their translations? This is where Google search operators can come in.
 

I recently gave a Take 5 Talk on advanced googling for translators to my local translators‘ and interpreters‘ association, the Western Regional Group (WRG), at its last online social on 1 June. The WRG has held regular online socials using Zoom since the pandemic took hold in the UK. The meeting on 1 June was hosted by Joint Social Media Officer Mariana Roccia.

 


To track down artificial intelligence terminology, you could use the intitle operator
to find webpages with either “glossary” or “dictionary” in the title




I shared insights into how I use Google search operators in my translations and my writing. Wildcards, the minus operator, site, intitle etc. are powerful tools which can be immensely useful: they help narrow down the hits returned by Google, extracting specific information that a less refined search query would not!

 


I shared insights in a Take 5 Talk into how I use Google search operators
to improve my translations and my writing




My talk was based on these two articles which recently appeared on this blog:

Must-know Google search operators for translators (part 1)
Must-know Google search operators for translators (part 2)