Managing time can be extremely difficult due to the way a modern office works. Managers want the best value for money from their employees and the highest profit margins. This can often mean less staff doing more work. When this is the case, learning how to effectively manage your time becomes a critical skill. If you do not have a decent time management plan then you may well become disorganised. This will lead to mistakes, poor performance, missed deadlines, disgruntled colleagues or clients and will leave you feeling overwhelmed and miserable. It is therefore vital to consider the best way of managing your time according to the type of work you do.

Begin by considering the list of tasks. The most basic form of time management is the 'to-do list.' Break your work tasks down into recurring events as a starting point. What things do you do every single day? What things do you do on a weekly/monthly basis? If there are annual tasks, at what point in the year do these need to be completed? This list will form the basis of your time management scheme. Look at each element on the list and decide how much time each one takes to complete and whether there is a particular point in the day when it must be done. After all, if it is your job to place the client lunch orders, there is no point scheduling time in at four in the afternoon! Take some form of diary or daily calendar and mark out the time and position of these tasks. Consider this time as unmovable. Everything else you do must be done around these events.

Once you have completed the basic task list, look anything else you have been given to do, be it project work or ad-hoc tasks. One important factor of time management is the ability to prioritise your work objectively, without considering personal preference. It does not matter which things you would like to do or what colleagues you are friends with. Think only about what is more important. What will the consequences be for the company if you place a task as unimportant? Will it be detrimental to a company sale if you put one task ahead of another?

In a similar way to your daily tasks, give each one a time estimate. You can now see which things must be done first and how long those things will take. Go back to your calendar and begin to block out time for the work you need to complete. Bear in mind that nobody ever works like a robot all day. You will need time to take regular breaks and it is worth scheduling in a 'spare' half hour to allow for this time along with any ad hoc quick requests you choose to accept. This half hour can be spread throughout the day.

Think about methods of planning your time now you have a diary basis of time management. There is a lot of technology out there, probably already on your work computer that can help you. Now would be a good time to dip into the training budget in order to make the most of it. Microsoft Outlook is a vastly underestimated tool for effective time management. You can add tasks with information such as due dates and can show what percentage of them is complete. It can be very useful to consolidate your task list in this way to avoid a paper trail of post it notes or emails. Whenever something new crops up you can add it to the list quickly and simply so it will not be forgotten.

Emails themselves can be added to the task along with documents relevant to it. As well as a task list, you can use Outlook's calendar facility to schedule events and plan your day. The calendars can be set up so other people can see them. This will at least let them know what you are working on and why you are so busy. If you know that a task takes two hours to complete and needs to be done in the morning then you can block out that time and get on with the task.

Another package useful for time management is Microsoft Project. This can be used to plan the time each individual task takes to complete as part of a project. It can also be used to plan your time as a whole. Some tasks can overlap and be dependant on other tasks being completed first. This is an effective way of planning out your time in great detail so you can keep track of everything. One of the most challenging parts of effective time management is consolidating a task list with all the relevant information at hand.

Once you have mastered the art of prioritisation and organisation of tasks you should feel in control of your working day and your productivity should improve. This will enable you to examine other aspects of time management that would streamline your day. It should also give you time to look at particular things that cause you problems and find effective solutions. There are many aspects of work that come under the time management umbrella such as learning to delegate in order to manage your work load and time effectively, however these can not be attempted until you have found a way to organise your list of tasks on a daily basis.