Spanish Translation Blog

Multitasking is a bad habit and how to overcome it

Being an Account Manager in the Translation Service Industry can be a very stressful job at times. It involves not only being involved in the entire Sales process, but also making sure that the Project Manager has sufficient information regarding the scope of the translation project, following up on clients by phone and e-mail, issuing Invoices, collecting Invoices and finding new clients.

There are certain peak times in our day, when our responses and follow-ups are very crucial and we have to process many quote requests at the same time, deliver translation projects (sometimes these need to be uploaded in the FTP Server, which can take quite some time), and resolve translation issues, where the client feels there might be some translation quality issues.

During these peak moments, it is very easy for an Account Manager to start multitasking and doing 3 or 4 tasks at the same time and before you know it, you made a mistake. The danger in this is that the human brain cannot focus well, when multitasking, and mistakes are an automatic result in the work output. In addition, people take longer to complete a task, as they are involved in several tasks at the same time. This is where Time Management plays a very important role of how to overcome multitasking.

Time Management as defined by the free encyclopedia is  “the act or process of exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase efficiency or productivity”. This means that one´s skills, tools and techniques are used to manage time in order to reach an objective of a certain task or achieve one´s goal.

Before multitasking becomes a bad habit, it is very important to manage time by being able to incorporate the following activities in one´s daily work routine: planning, setting goals, prioritizing, organizing, scheduling, delegating, analyzing time spent, monitoring and allocating.

My experience as an Account Manager, is to learn how to prioritize and set certain goals, so that I am not forced to multitask and hence make mistakes, while I am trying to resolve all of my work issues at the same time.