Mankinds effort to manage time more effectively has been evolving for thousands of years. It began in earnest with the invention of the sundial by the Egyptians around 1500 BCE.

The types of time management techniques often employed today are wide ranging and varied in both their approach and tools used. Most business people have graduated from traditional desk top calendars and wrist watches to some type of digital tool for their day to day time management.

Other more personal methods of practicing good time management involve various methods for prioritizing and organizing goals. These include identifying and eliminating time wasting habits, prioritizing and organizing short and long term goals and delegating tasks or portions of them to others.

Some of the more structured methods used for time management include the Pareto Analysis and the Posec Method.

The Pareto Analysis theorizes that 80 percent of all problems result from 20 percent of all causes.

The 80/20 rule as it is now known can be applied to almost any situation:

80% of customer complaints focus on 20% of a companies products or services.

80% of schedule delays are caused from 20% of the possible reasons for the delays.

20% of a companies products or services account for 80% of their profit.

20% of any given sales-force produces 80% of generated revenues.

When applied to time management this means that if you can identify and modify only 20 percent of the root causes of problems within your current time management system, you should be able to fix 80 percent of those problems.

A good example of this would be to identify two 15 minute periods of time during a normal day when you feel that you are being the least productive. By changing the way these 2 small periods of time are currently used the productivity of those periods can be increased by up to 80 percent.

The Posec Method of time management is one that stresses the following... Prioritize by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing.

Prioritize your time and define your life by goals.

Organize tasks you have to accomplish regularly to be successful.

Streamline things that must be done even though you might not enjoy doing them.

Economize tasks you should do or even enjoy doing but that are not top priority.

Contribute by being aware of the few remaining things that make a difference.

When applied to time management this metehod gives the practioner clear guidance in the area of prioritizing goals. If followed properly this method should encourage movement upward within an organization.

There is another time management method worth mentioning, The Eisenhower Method. This method is said to have been used by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This method involves the evaluating of tasks using the following criteria:

Important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent.

Tasks in the unimportant/not urgent category are dropped completely.

Tasks in the important/urgent category are done immediately and personally.

Tasks in the unimportant/urgent category are delegated to someone else.

Tasks in important/not urgent category are assigned an end date and are done personally.

The Time Boxing Method involves the breaking up of large projects into smaller more manageable segments. These shorter segments give you a limited amount of time to accomplish a result. If the task is not completed within the alloted time it is assigned another "time box" on another day and put aside. You are now free to move to the next task that has been assigned its own time box.

This method allows you to manage large tasks in several ways including:

Spread your work day across key areas.

Prioritize more effectively.

Divide up a daunting problem.

Deliver incremental results.

Have increased focus.

Increase motivation.

Improve your effectiveness and efficiency.

Ability to revisit problems.

Defeat analysis paralysis.

If the above structured methods of time management just won't work but you are in need of some type plan there are some basic guidelines you can follow. Try sitting down and setting short, medium and long term goals for both yourself and anyone that is working with you on a daily basis.

Short term goals will be those can be done within a day or two. Medium term goals would be those that will take between a week to a couple of months to complete. Long term goals might take anywhere between a few months to several years to complete.

After you decide on what the goals will be you are going to need a detailed plan regarding how you are going to achieve those goals and a time frame on when they will be completed.