In any career path, there are certain core skills that are universal to all roles, and developing these areas will always be of benefit to an ambitious professional. Of these core skills, an ability to be an effective time manager is probably one of the most important.

Whether you are looking to progress in your current role, or are potentially seeking a move to another company, good time management is central to your current and future effectiveness, even when under pressure. Here are some tips:

Glance at your week
Get your hands on a week-at-a-glance appointment book or diary and use it whenever possible. Put everything that you want to achieve in this book, it will give you the structure to plan more effectively.

Distinguish what's important 
Make sure you can differentiate between tasks that are urgent and that are vital. Urgent duties may seem crucial to complete immediately, but it is rarely vital that it has to be done right now or even at all.

Schedule your priorities
Keep track of your time by half hour increments for 2 weeks to see how you actually spend your time. Compare this to what you should be or want to be spending your time on. It might surprise you and will give you the tangible motivation to make needed changes.

Learn to say no 
Many time management issues stem from an inability to turn down work requested from peers and co-workers. In controlling your time, it's important to say no to the project, not the person. You cannot do everything everyone asks you to do.

Effective delegation helps everyone perform better
For whatever reason, many people find it hard to delegate jobs to others, meaning that workloads can become unnecessarily severe. Learning how to effectively delegate, by picking the right person, giving clear directions, setting benchmark and due dates, and then letting them do it, is a remarkably empowering aspect of time management.

Procrastination - the thief of time
We all do it from time to time, but successful time managers ensure that it is kept to a minimum. Fear, boredom, perfectionism, an overwhelming task and unclear goals can all add to a desire to procrastinate. It truly is the thief of time, so identify the reason behind the procrastination, and make sure that you are solving the right problem when dealing with it.

The 80:20 Rule
The 80:20 rule occurs in many aspects of life, and says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. The remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always exactly 80:20, it can be helpful to recognise this truism within your own time management.

Put a value on it
If you earn £10,000 a year, each minute is worth £0.09. If you earn £30,000 a year, each minute is worth £0.27. It can be helpful sometimes to use these thoughts to help you prioritise your activities and to determine whether, and to whom, you should be delegating. Any time you are doing work that someone at a lower wage could be doing, you are losing money.

By incorporating some of the time management tips and skills in this piece, you can optimise your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you. Set goals and stick to them.

There are 1,440 minutes in a day and 29020 days in an 80-year lifetime, so take control of your time and make this year the year you do and get what you want.