Does the sound of that leaking tap, creaking door, or the irritation of a flickering screen drive you crazy? Just as you get your well earned cup of tea or switch on the TV to have a little chill out time, there it is in the background - the constant drip, squeak or flash that permeates into your inner sanctum and reminds you that you haven't got round to sorting something out.

It's not just when you sit back on your favourite recliner when this subliminal nagging starts. Even at work there are always things that keep cropping up and need fixing before we can let go and move on to the next task. Sometimes we feel swamped and no matter how organised we would like to be, we just never get the time to tick the tasks off of our checklist.

Technology should smooth the way and make our lives easier, but it does sometimes feel as if we are constantly keeping up with never-ending e-mails, texts and calendar reminders, not to mention all the non-digital flotsam that demands our attention.

However, help is at hand and Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager can help you organise your life more efficiently and avoid losing sales. With Microsoft Office 2010, you get the newest version of Outlook, which promises to turn countless e-mails into manageable conversations; enables you to check your schedule effortlessly, manage multiple e-mail accounts, and even link to your social networks from the comfort of one application.

Microsoft Outlook 2010 with Business Contact Manager provides powerful customer and contact management to improve the effectiveness of your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts. With a new interface, new project management and marketing tools, and powerful customisation, Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 lets you manage all of your organisation's customer information within the program.

The most common cause of annoyance when sending and receiving emails is sifting through the Spam fug. Now, Business Contact manager helps you link and track e-mails from or sent to all of your customers. You can also share customer information with colleagues; and create share contact and sales information with those in your team who need it. Now you can keep track of new and existing customers instead of scrambling around for the Rolodex each time a customer calls.

If you do find that you have too many e-mails and too little time, try skim reading. There are many interactive exercises you can find online that will help you to train yourself to understand text while skipping over vowels. Use soft focus as you read, which means resisting the urge to peer tensely at the words in favour of relaxing your eye muscles and letting your peripheral vision do the work. This allows you to cover more ground more quickly.

Successful sales are often due to that first contact call. It's your chance to sell and often your customer's first introduction to your company. So if you need to pitch your calls differently to each customer, Business Contact Manager can help you select exactly the contacts that you need to call, then write or import a call script. As the call proceeds, take notes directly in the script, then record "call complete" and set a follow-up flag for those contacts requiring additional actions, such as providing a brochure or making a personal visit.

If you want to send a blanket newsletter or a sector-specific e-campaign, you can create and distribute personalised marketing communications and monitor the results by filtering prospect and customer data, and then seamlessly send campaigns using Publisher or Word.

There's also a function to help you customise your contacts to fit in with your own business requirements. You can create new record types, customise existing ones, and define relationships between records, using the visual form designer, including adding or remove fields so that each record reflects exactly your business needs. When you define a new record type, it's easy to create a Vendor, Salesperson, or Employee record, and then decide exactly which fields each record type needs. And Outlook 2010 also allows you to define relationships between records, keep track of virtual teams, your customers' business partners, or their key influencers.

It's also quick and easy to manage sales leads, by prioritising according to rules you set up so that you can follow up on the most important leads first. If you need to create sales stages, Business Contact Manager sets a reminder in Outlook for the next activity you need to remember in any task-driven follow ups.

One of the most useful tools Business Contact Manager has it that it helps identify your top customers and products, and allows you to forecast sales and prioritise tasks to get those sales. Use the dashboard to keep track of your company's sales pipeline and sales funnel. You can make use of any of 72 predefined reports, or create and share customised reports that contain exactly the data you need. Or if you need to link up with a spreadsheet, you can export reports and their formatting and formulas to Excel.

Even if the junk mail is piling up behind the door at home, there's no need to let that have a knock on effect on your business. Consolidate customer information relating to your contacts, including e-mail messages, appointments, and documents in a single place.

Synchronize Business Contacts with Outlook, SharePoint, or Windows Live Contacts. View and edit your Business Contacts from anywhere you can access Outlook Contacts. Bidirectional Synchronization between Business Contacts and Outlook Contacts ensure that both copies are always up-to-date. Even when you are out of the office, you can work offline, and then synchronise information when you return.

If you need to create a project from scratch and dread the time you think it will take to sit down and plan each stage, don't stress; with Outlook 2010 Project Templates you can quickly and easily create projects, even those with many dependent tasks. Just define the project you need once, save it as a named template, and create as many additional projects of the same type as you need. You can even assign projects and project tasks to other users. When you assign a project task, information is automatically transferred to that individual's task lists, appearing on the To-Do Bar and as an Outlook reminder.

It's simple to manage your projects and share project-related information with others in the company, and even monitor project activities. And for those of us who need to centralise all project information, including activities, e-mail messages, meetings, notes, and attachments it's a must.

And finally, just try to ignore that leaking tap for once. As it manifests its way into the back of your mind, it's actually putting you off enjoying that cup of tea or listening to the top ten classics. Distraction is one of the biggest causes of poor concentration. The first step to blocking distractions is to identify them. Just get the wrench out and fix the washer - or call a plumber if you can't take the plunge yourself. Or better still, make use of your Business Contact Manager and find that 24-hour call out number.