| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: When working, how often do you check your phone messages? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "When working, how often do you check your phone messages?".
View the poll results »
| | | | Richard Jenkins 
Brazil
Local time: 14:46
Member (2006)
Portuguese to English
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Miss a message and you potentially miss a job. It's part of life as a freelancer.
[Edited at 2024-12-12 12:20 GMT]
| | | | | Why would I need to do that? | Dec 12, 2024 |
My phone is in the room with me when I'm working - if a call or a message comes in I hear it.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:46
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| I receive emails on my PC | Dec 12, 2024 |
I have never had a client try to contact me by SMS, WhatsApp, or any other messaging service.
Clients contact me by email or, very occasionally, telephone.
Are there really people out there who get messages from clients on platforms that are only accessible on their phone??
And like Rachel, I don't have to check because I get notifications.
Feeling a bit confused by this question
Dan
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IrinaN
United States
Local time: 11:46
English to Russian
+ ...
| May I inquire | Dec 12, 2024 |
About scientific or practical purpose of this one?
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Dan Lucas wrote:
I have never had a client try to contact me by SMS, WhatsApp, or any other messaging service.
Clients contact me by email or, very occasionally, telephone.
Are there really people out there who get messages from clients on platforms that are only accessible on their phone??
And like Rachel, I don't have to check because I get notifications.
Feeling a bit confused by this question
Dan
Emails and the occasional phone call for me too. Similarly baffled by the question.
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 18:46
English to German
+ ...
| a poll for youngsters | Dec 12, 2024 |
The new generations grow up with their smartphones being like an extension of their body and soul.
They start scrolling before breakfast and fall asleep while scrolling and whiping through an endless stream of messages (from family, friends, peers and strangers about their kids, pets, meals, new clothes, holidays and so on) as well as posts on social media channels they subscribed to with silly dances, trends, products marketed by so-called influencers... a giant bubble that steels them t... See more The new generations grow up with their smartphones being like an extension of their body and soul.
They start scrolling before breakfast and fall asleep while scrolling and whiping through an endless stream of messages (from family, friends, peers and strangers about their kids, pets, meals, new clothes, holidays and so on) as well as posts on social media channels they subscribed to with silly dances, trends, products marketed by so-called influencers... a giant bubble that steels them time (= lifetime) and makes them to addicts.
No wonder these generations have trouble focussing on anything for more than the time between one new message alert and the next.
So I don't wonder about this poll. It is for these generations. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Liena Vijupe
Latvia
Local time: 19:46
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
+ ...
I understood the question to be about checking messages which are not related to work, as in the sense of distraction. In which case there is no strict pattern or significant difference from when I am not working. I usually check them when I hear a notification that somebody is trying to contact me and more often when I have nothing much to do (where I have deactivated sound notifications, such as any social media I still have, unimportant e-mails etc.).
Anything related to work comes via ... See more I understood the question to be about checking messages which are not related to work, as in the sense of distraction. In which case there is no strict pattern or significant difference from when I am not working. I usually check them when I hear a notification that somebody is trying to contact me and more often when I have nothing much to do (where I have deactivated sound notifications, such as any social media I still have, unimportant e-mails etc.).
Anything related to work comes via e-mail and I only check it on my phone when I am not at my desk during general working hours.
[Edited at 2024-12-12 15:46 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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| Distractions | Dec 12, 2024 |
Zea_Mays wrote:
The new generations grow up with their smartphones being like an extension of their body and soul.
They start scrolling before breakfast and fall asleep while scrolling and whiping through an endless stream of messages (from family, friends, peers and strangers about their kids, pets, meals, new clothes, holidays and so on) as well as posts on social media channels they subscribed to with silly dances, trends, products marketed by so-called influencers... a giant bubble that steels them time (= lifetime) and makes them to addicts.
No wonder these generations have trouble focussing on anything for more than the time between one new message alert and the next.
So I don't wonder about this poll. It is for these generations.
All the distractions come straight to me on my PC, I don't need my mobile phone for that.
I use the Freedom app to limit the amount I can waste my life on social media - which is a problem not necessarily limited to new generations.
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I check my messages whenever I hear a notification. If it comes from a client, I’ll check my email (the very few work inquiries I have received through WhatsApp were scams), if it comes from my family members and it looks important, I’ll read it, all other non-urgent messages will be read or deleted at the end of the day…
| | | | Laureana Pavon
Uruguay
Local time: 14:46
Member (2007)
English to Spanish
+ ...
MODERATOR | It may be cultural | Dec 12, 2024 |
My local customers (Uruguay) frequently contact me via WhatsApp.
| | | | | Different worlds | Dec 12, 2024 |
Feeling a bit confused by this question
Similarly baffled by the question
In my view, the question is both clear and interesting. Not so much for the question, maybe, as for the answers, such as the above. Or this one:
Miss a message and you potentially miss a job
If I miss a message, my client calls me and asks if I've received it. We clearly live in different worlds and this question is a good reminder of this. One is not better or worse than the other but it's easy to forget that we are not all the same.
I don't have to check because I get notifications
Another good reminder: I switched off notifications almost as soon as they started coming in, years ago. If my phone rings, I normally hear it, but if I had a notification for the thirty or so spam e-mails (it used to be about a hundred) that come in every day, I'd go out of my mind. They just pile up in the spam folder and self-delete after a month. The rest I read when the time comes, but not on my phone.
If I want to know if anything comes in on Facebook, Instagram, X, or whatever (including Proz), I'll go and have a look, unless I forget. Even then, I normally check these things when I'm at the computer - in other words, when I am (or should be) at work. Almost never when I'm not.
If I do see a message from a client (or friend) on my phone when I'm out and about, I'll normally wait till I get back to my desk before replying.
Simon
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Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 18:46
English to German
+ ...
| oldies vs youngsters | Dec 12, 2024 |
Rachel Waddington wrote:
Zea_Mays wrote:
The new generations grow up with their smartphones being like an extension of their body and soul.
They start scrolling before breakfast and fall asleep while scrolling and whiping through an endless stream of messages (from family, friends, peers and strangers about their kids, pets, meals, new clothes, holidays and so on) as well as posts on social media channels they subscribed to with silly dances, trends, products marketed by so-called influencers... a giant bubble that steels them time (= lifetime) and makes them to addicts.
No wonder these generations have trouble focussing on anything for more than the time between one new message alert and the next.
So I don't wonder about this poll. It is for these generations.
All the distractions come straight to me on my PC, I don't need my mobile phone for that.
I use the Freedom app to limit the amount I can waste my life on social media - which is a problem not necessarily limited to new generations.
I think (most of) we oldies have a different, more sober approach to social media.
The younger generations live in symbiosis with their mobile phones (they rarely use computers or laptops, except for work if necessary, but I know translators who only work on their smartphones - don't know how they manage to do it...), and if you take the devices away from them, it's like amputating them a limb.
It's really difficult for them to snooze the news and post notifications. FOMO (fear of missing something out) is the disease of these generations.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:46
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Actually sometimes I do use my phone | Dec 12, 2024 |
Simon Turner wrote:
If I do see a message from a client (or friend) on my phone when I'm out and about, I'll normally wait till I get back to my desk before replying.
My phone pinged this morning just as I was stopping at the petrol station after a visit to the weekly market in Fishguard. It was an email from a regular Japanese client with an offer of a decent-sized job for delivery on Tuesday. I could have put it off for half an hour until I got home, but she was there at her desk in Tokyo, at the end of a long working day, waiting for me. The decent and professional thing to do was to take thirty seconds to respond to her immediately to either accept or decline, which I did.
In this case my decision was made easy by my familiarity with the client and also the end client, which is a company for which I regularly translate documents via this agency. Even if I had been unable to accept the project then and there, I would have acknowledged that I had received the message and given her some idea of when she might expect a considered response.
Obviously, different areas of work have different levels of deadline urgency. If the client were an art gallery with an inquiry about a project for an exhibition in the summer of 2025, the thirty minutes I mention above would make no difference. By contrast, my sector tends to have short deadlines and in such cases I am very glad that I can use my phone to maintain my reputation for responsiveness.
But that's the only work-related task I ever do on a phone, simply because such devices are utterly unsuited for the kind of translations in which I am involved.
If it is true that younger generations use their phones for translation work (or allow phones to distract them from translation work) that makes me happy. The way I see it, there is no way they will be as efficient when using such devices as I am when sitting at my desk translating in a Windows environment replete with carefully selected applications and software tools. So those people won't be competing with me effectively anytime soon. Winning!
Dan
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Zea_Mays wrote:
I think (most of) we oldies have a different, more sober approach to social media.
The younger generations live in symbiosis with their mobile phones (they rarely use computers or laptops, except for work if necessary, but I know translators who only work on their smartphones - don't know how they manage to do it...), and if you take the devices away from them, it's like amputating them a limb.
It's really difficult for them to snooze the news and post notifications. FOMO (fear of missing something out) is the disease of these generations.
We have the benefit of having lived much of our lives without the intrusion of apps constantly trying to get our attention, for which I am very grateful.
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