My childhood was conducted in three languages. 

At home, my family spoke English. School, from grade one to halfway through grade three, was conducted in Mandarin Chinese (half way through grade three I transferred to the English-speaking international school, where we still had daily Mandarin classes). The language spoken at the church my family attended was primarily Taiwanese, which is the language my parents first learned when we moved to Taiwan. Everyday life outside of church, school, and home was conducted in a mixture of Taiwanese and Mandarin, except for the rare occasions when we got together with other foreigners. 

The technical term for this fluent switching back and forth is code-switching. Most Taiwanese are experts at this. If you only know one of the two main languages in Taiwan, there is much that you will not understand.

As a kid, I took code-switching for granted. Even today, though my ability to speak in Mandarin and Taiwanese is rusty, and my vocabulary is not as broad as I would like, my comprehension remains stable. I can still follow a conversation in which Taiwanese, Mandarin, and English are all being used in some combination. I often think in Mandarin and Taiwanese. This is not something that I consciously try to do; it just is, in the same way that I can understand Taiwanese, but am unable to explain its seven tones.

I have been thinking about code-switching recently in relation to my work. I have been juggling multiple projects over the last few weeks. Too many projects, it seems. There is the indexing, of course, often two books at a time, with more waiting my attention. I am also consulting on a long-term project rewriting a policy document, which is a new type of work for me. I am also nearly finished proofreading a book, for which I also wrote the index. Add in an hour of writing for myself every morning, and it feels like each day I am working on four distinct projects, at least, trying to keep each moving forward towards their respective deadlines.

Am I too busy? I admit I have taken on too many projects. Learning to say no to clients continues to be a challenge, while also accurately judging how long projects will take to complete, my own energy, and being protective of my own time and priorities. I am still learning how quickly or slowly I can turn around a project, which seems to vary anyway as I become more proficient at indexing, or if a project is easier or harder than expected. It is the usual fluid and chaotic schedule of a freelancer, or at least how I imagine most freelancers work. 

Specifically, I have been thinking about my need to quickly switch between projects throughout the day.  I need to put down my consulting for the day and pick up the indexing or proofreading from where I left off the day before. I need to be able to finish indexing a chapter in one book and then start indexing the next chapter of another book. I do not have much time to catch up on what I previously completed; I need to have that knowledge ready to go.

This is tough work, I am realizing. It takes a mental toll to be on like this throughout the day, to be able to jump from task to task, and topic to topic, while maintaining the same pace throughout. I try to make it easier by working on these projects in the same order each day, so that I can have a routine and rhythm that I can take for granted. 

I have also been wondering if code-switching might be a metaphor for this switching back and forth. A bad metaphor, perhaps. Code-switching in speech often occurs within the same sentence, at least in Taiwan. The switching I am doing in my work is sequential and not nearly so rapid. But I still have to maintain fluency, so to speak, in all projects. The pivot from one to the next has to feel effortless.

Easier said than done, I know. This post is not meant to brag about how much I can accomplish. It is, instead, admitting that I’ve been in over my head again these last few weeks, trying to do too much. I look forward to saying goodbye to projects and finding some margin again for rest and other activities. I find three projects per day to be my sweet maximum. That is the number I need to keep in mind as I book projects and plan my schedule.

If you are a freelancer, how do you tame your schedule? Do you try to work on more than one project at a time?