Time management at the VM position

What is time #management , and why is it essential to improve our work?

We all know the answers to these questions. We know that planning our tasks will help us in achieving the goals that we set for ourselves. According to Brian Tracy, "More than any other #practice in your #career , your ability to manage time will determine your #success or failure. It's a simple equation." But how to put all that we know into practice? How to use these tips in the #VM position?

Let's start our day by setting the main goals for the coming day or month. Make a vision of what you want to achieve by the end of the day/month: 

• Is it a new #linguists’ pool with life science expertise to ensure better client service?
• Is it strengthening the #relationship with all vendors in the base, which will benefit future collaboration?
• Is it helping your #PM colleagues understand the importance of good linguist choices?

These and many more #goals you can set as the Vendor Manager. Some are long-term goals requiring in-depth #planning , and some are just ad-hoc actions which you can prioritize by preparing to-do-lists. In this article I would like to focus on the long-term goals.

My goal here will be to automate the work of the PM #Team . First and foremost, we need to understand exactly what we want to achieve. Let's take as an example - helping your PMs better understand how to choose a proper linguist. The first step we need to take is to consult with our employer/manager about his/her vision, present our point of view, and plan how we would like to achieve it. Once you get the green light from your #supervisors , you can be sure you can count on their support.

And most importantly - you do not waste your time! Imagine that your vision would not be seen as beneficial. That would mean that all the work you would do later would be for nothing. So #consultation and #communication are time management tips as well.

When you are already in the process of planning and sketching the steps to achieve the goal, do not stop writing it down. I am a very old-fashioned person. I need to put anything I plan in my notebook (nd I have quite a few of those!). Whatever is put down on paper gets more power and means more, you realize that this is how it should be done. 

Taking our goal example, we may put down into planning actions like: 

• regular #meetings with PM to understand better their processes,
• preparing a better description of linguists,
• monitoring the linguist assignment process.

Another thing strongly connected with planning is the deadline you set to achieve your goal. Without the date, the planning and the path to achieving it will be endless, and procrastination will start. At the VM position, many other tasks will be with higher priority and greater importance, and you may end up with that particular goal suddenly disappearing from your planning horizon.

You are ready to take action as soon as you understand management, planning, and deadline. Start now, today. There is no start date to be set. Make sure that every day you assign some of your time to accomplishing this specific goal. 

Having the vision of achieving the goal can save time and ensure #effectiveness . I always follow the above planning rules, and all the plans I made have been completed so far. And believe me, it is very satisfying when your hard and planned work gives results.

Prepared by

Wiktoria Walicka