Changing Your Work Paradigm: Be Willing to Let Go

Let it go!  Let it go!  (We’ve all got the song in our heads now, don’t we?  Sorry!)

Is the thought of letting a scopist look at your raw, unedited writing…comfortable?  A little scary?  Or maybe even downright terrifying?  Well, guess what?

You were trained for this.  No.  You were BORN for this.  And one more thing:

You Are Human

Please internalize this.  You’re probably nowhere near as “awful” as you think you are.  We are naturally our own biggest critic.  And it’s just the nature of this job, that some days you’re the pigeon (yay!) and some days you’re the statue.  Some days you’re on point and writing like a real-time champion, and other days you wonder whose fingers (or voice) are in charge of putting the words on the page. 

You are HUMAN.  You’re not supposed to be perfect.  There are so many variables that can affect your writing quality.  As long as you are striving to improve every day and putting in the effort, you should be PROUD of yourself.  Believe us when we say that your rough transcript is FAR, FAR superior to what Siri can do.  🙌  💪  👏

Prioritize Where Your Power Lies

Where do you make the most money?  This shouldn’t be news to you.  Stenographers know that their money is made ON THE STENO MACHINE.  At the end of the proceeding, you can easily perform a rough calculation that shows you how much money you’ll make on this job (give or take a few pages as the transcript is edited and proofread). 

In fact, for every hour that you spend scoping or proofing, your profit per hour dramatically decreases.  Want to see your profit per hour?  Use Stenovate’s handy-dandy profit-per-hour calculator.

So how do you increase your profit per hour (while actually working less as you earn more)?  Easy.  Utilize transcript teammates for the “homework” portion of your job.  By paying out a small portion of the income earned on your transcript AND saving approximately 50% of the time spent editing and/or proofreading, your profit per hour skyrockets.   And you’re freed up to do other things.  (Make more money on your machine, take a bath, read a book, cuddle your pets, whatever!) 

Yes, you can scope your own work, but there are competent, reliable people out there willing to do the editing for you.  Plus, if you upload a preference sheet into your Stenovate profile, they’ll know how you like to format and punctuate.  Why not create a team of people with whom you can share the load?  Let them do what they love, so you can do what you love.

If only there was a place to find community-vetted, reputable scopists and proofreaders with awesome reviews… Oh, wait.  Sounds like the Stenovate Job Boards.  😉.  If you haven’t heard of Stenovate yet, it’s so much more than “just a job board.”  It’s actually an entire project management system where reporters can find help AND collaborate efficiently, organizing all their work with their teammates in one seamless tool. 

Let Go of the Minutiae

So forget the fear.  Let go of the “minutiae control” over your pages and instead embrace the macro – visualize the entirety of your production.  Take the time to develop a trusting relationship with a few other professionals and start to take advantage of the time you’ve freed up to take a weekend off, party like a rockstar, or just…take a nap. 💃 🏖 😴