Do you ever wonder about creating a successful daily routine, transcribing from home?
Your listening skills and typing speed are mighty fine. You pour your heart and soul into taking online transcription courses. And you rightly believe in providing quality transcripts.
Yet, it appears that you aren’t getting the success you strive for.
You feel like you’re lagging when it comes to performance, output, and even precision. Fear starts creeping in that it’s impossible to make enough money transcribing.
It’s frustrating.
But listen:
There are some habits that hinder nearly every transcriber. And those that succeed understand what’s stopping them from reaching their desired pay rates.
Therefore, if you aren’t getting the results you deserve, it might be time to study the limiting habits that successful home transcribers avoid.
Let’s get started.
Habit #1: Misappropriating Time When Working From Home
Home transcription comes with a fair share of distractions.
In fact, the most challenging battle you can conquer while working from home is cracking the right work-life balance.
When should you wake up? When is it time for bed? What time should you take your kids to school? Should you check-in with your colleagues as if you were in the office?
It can be confusing.
But one fact brings everything into perspective — if you don’t master your time, the world will do it for you. And you’ll never efficiently execute important tasks that amount to your goals.
It’ll be tempting to only transcribe when you feel like it. You’ll miss deadlines, and, more importantly, you won’t establish professionalism with transcription jobs.
Not because all your time will go into crafting quality. Not because you’ll be working to pass all the skills tests. No, that undefined time will eat your day up and you won’t have an effortless workflow.
And that begs the question:
How Can You Manipulate Time to Work for You When Transcribing From Home?
The most straightforward answer to this question is to create a routine.
That is, understand what you want to do. Then, build a system that enables you to perform at your very best every day.
But it isn’t easy.
Building a work-at-home routine can bring monotonous repetition. However, it’s the secret to increasing your productivity permanently.
So, the follow-up question is: How do you get smart with general transcription routines?
Let’s quickly explore the basics.
Clock in Enough Sleep
The world today interprets sleep as a weakness — something that you can power through and caffeinate over.
If anything, though, it’s the opposite. Science says that a lack of sleep can be as harmful as being drunk.
And when you make money from home, it’s easy to think you have all day to do something and not schedule sleep. Then, you end up with fewer sleeping hours which in turn limit your performance during the day.
Instead of only setting the alarm to wake you up, start setting aside enough time to sleep.
Arrange Your Day to Increase Per Audio Minute Output
Do you know exactly how much you want to work per month? How many audio-hours you aim to complete per day? How long you want to build up your transcribing experience and make money?
The only way to battle the guilt of not meeting your work-from-home goal is to inventory your tasks.
How to Schedule Chores Around Your Transcription Jobs
In your household, some duties are non-negotiable. Duties like:
- Taking kids to school
- Showering and getting ready
- Taking lunch
- Meeting a client deadline
First, assign time to every non-negotiable task, starting with the least flexible.
Next, identify other critical but non-negotiable tasks you want to finish and add them to your calendar.
Then, remove all distracting notifications so that you can have quality time to handle what you’ve set out to do.
This won’t always be easy, though.
Getting everyone on-board with your work-from-home schedule is often a challenging task — one that demands over-communication on your end.
Explain to your spouse, friends, kids, or roommates when you plan to work and what you’ll need from them to be successful.
That’s the surest way to ensure when you want to work — you go all-in. When you’re not, you’re all-out.
Habit #2: Transcribing Without Breaks
Yes, nearly everyone gets tempted to knock out all the transcription tasks in a single sitting.
Yes, sometimes working without breaks is an efficient way for a transcriptionist to catch up or get ahead.
And yes, it’s easier to assume that every precious minute makes a difference, so you keep working.
However, normalizing work without breaks presents some adverse effects on health, family life, and productivity.
The Transcriptionists’ Work-With-No-Breaks Problem
In the overwhelm of too much to do and not enough time to do it, it’s easy to think that the only way to get everything done in a work-at-home job is to keep going.
It’s easy to worry that if you stop, you might lose momentum.
But delivering consistent transcript quality and output requires periodic pauses. It demands being smart and taking breaks.
Because when you overwork yourself, you’ll eventually burnout.
Then you’ll face exhaustion that will zap the joy out of your transcribe-from-home career. You’ll have zero energy to give. Everything about transcription work will start to annoy you.
So, like other transcriptionists who enjoy long-term success, you’ll find that scheduling breaks will help you finish nearly all your milestones in a work-at-home setting.
How to Start Working With Breaks In Your Transcription Jobs
Start with the basics:
- Change the way you think about downtime, and stop feeling guilty about breaks. It’s the only scientifically proven method to regain focus, sharpness, and motivation.
- Reevaluate your transcription goals and implement a schedule with breaks — working in small bursts even when you’re a beginner.
Habit #3: Not Treating the Transcribe-From-Home Job Like a Business
With a transcribe-from-home career, you can:
- Work when you want
- Only work with clients you like
- Transcribe full-time or part-time
- Make money that lets you quit your job, travel, and spend more time with your family
But it’s only possible if you treat your transcription job as a business.
Like anything worthwhile, it’s hard work to reach that point.
You need to pass all transcription tests at hand, study successful habits, practice, and put in a lot of work. You also need to master the work-at-home craft.
How to Master the Work-at-Home Craft as a Transcriptionist
That means planning on where you want your transcription career to take you, building the right speed and accuracy, work experience, and developing an entrepreneur’s mindset.
It is easy to take a work-at-home job for granted.
After all — you only work when you want, where you want, and at your pace.
While the freedom is great, you have to be disciplined enough to enjoy the benefits of working from home.
You have to plan, create target earnings, and assign a specific workspace.
Why Should You Plan How You’ll Work From Home?
With a plan, you won’t have to wait for external motivation to bring your dreams to life.
Did Rev or Lisa Mills reject your application? Does distraction slow your progress?
Go back to your original goal and assess the skill test you need to pass to sharpen your focus. Then, develop strategies that make you the transcriptionist you want to be.
Set Aside a Workspace for Home Transcription
A dedicated workspace reduces distractions, creates the right atmosphere for work, and mentally gets you into work mode.
But that doesn’t mean it has to be fancy.
All you need is to assign a specific location to give you privacy and a sound barrier. As a result, you’ll have the willpower to work more, amid other people’s activities in your household.
Habit #4: Dumping Your Social Life for a Transcription Career
Yes, solitude has positive effects on a transcriptionist — it makes you a better listener, increases thought clarity, and gives a sense of feeling recharged.
Yes, you should ruthlessly regulate your social media usage.
But, an entire lifetime without off-hours socializing diminishes your ability to meet new clients.
How to Crack the Social-Work Balance and Improve Your Transcription Experience
The best approach would be to bring your social life into your home transcription work. That way you can improve productivity, generate quality transcript samples, and, more importantly, be satisfied with your overall life.
Plus, it isn’t easy to neatly cut out an area of life to propel general transcription — a connection with people is deeply wired to transcription work, and helps you deal with life’s inevitable ups and downs.
Sadly, Most Work-From-Home Transcriptionists Don’t Know This…
… They labor under the mistaken assumption that they’ll be successful with random habits. And they worry about years of experience, transcription tests, and how to get paid working with transcription companies.
They worry that they won’t earn as much per month if they take time to tune in to the right behaviors.
If that were true, you wouldn’t see people leaving their job to start a full-time transcription career.
The truth is that scheduling your life around your transcription job is challenging. But figuring it out is incredibly gratifying.
So, stop waiting.
Take a work-at-home behavior course here at CopySmiths and start tuning into the habits of a highly successful transcriptionist.
After all — good habits are the foundation of greatness.
