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Hopefully others will weigh in. ?? SM

Posted By: MissIndigo on 2008-10-25
In Reply to: My goal is $150/day, only type - 135lph @ 7cpl...impossible?

Hi, 135. My first thought is that you may need to figure out what else might be contributing to your low line count. I say that because I'm a slow typist too but with an Expander quickly improved beyond that. So, sorry if any of these are ridiculously inapplicable, but here go some thoughts for anyone trying to get faster:

New to typing? Butt in chair typing away as many hours a day as you can stand until speed is good enough, tiring though it is.

New to medical language? Same as above. The more hours each day, the faster you get good (but the progress in this is obvious and exciting to see).

Use reference books instead of computer references? Books take way too much time to get out and thumb through, and you can't do wild-card and most associated-word searches. Get computer dictionary and medical language programs and get in the habit of constantly googling for terms, often even before the programs.

Type and then go back to adjust punctuation? I saw people do that on my first job, and my heart ached for them because I knew they were doomed to do poorly or fail outright if they couldn't learn to punctuate as they went, continually putting more words on paper.

Slow reader, and maybe slow punctuator? Practice reading. For weeks until you're faster and written-language patterns become second nature. Reader's Digest has a nice crisp minimal writing/punctuation style that's good to absorb, but any books or magazines enjoyable enough to read a lot will help tremendously over time.

Killer high standards? I also worked with a woman who focused on every report as if it was her critically ill mother's. Another major production and income killer as there are drastically diminishing returns on time spent achieving perfection, and no one will thank you for it, neither hospitals paying by the hour, nor production-pay outfits. I suspect a few of the people on this forum who say they cannot make a living have this problem. Most companies require 0% critical mistakes but are happy to accept 98%+ overall accuracy. Over 98% is the goal. And in editing, punctuation corrections are made as needed for reading clarity, not for pretty. This also can be hard emotionally, but it's something else we aren't thanked, much less paid, for. A lot of us have our personal obsessions we can't stop fixing, but settle on a couple of indulgences and relax the others to industry standards.

Problems with a bad work platform? Get another job as soon as you can find it.

Set a goal of $150 for 8 hours now. Once you have that you can start paring your shift down to 6 hours, then even less, to achieve it.

Nothing else is coming to mind right now, so if none of those apply, head straight to productivitytalk.com with notepad in hand. There are lots of InstantText gurus sharing away over there.

And once you bump that production up a bit, definitely find someone who'll pay you a higher base rate AND offers a good incentive pay scale. The incentive pay for higher daily production should get you handily to your $150 goal.

Best wishes.


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Years ago, I lost about 15 pounds from one visit to another, and my doctor noticed and asked me if it was intentional. (It was.) I liked that she noticed and asked. Weight gain or loss can be a sign of so many things: thyroid problems, depression, eating disorder, just to name a few.

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Please be sure and weigh in on the survey, thanks. nm
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