How to survive… without time management skills

Get yourself a reliable watch and alarm clock

Then always set them five minutes fast. That way you’ll always arrive everywhere five minutes early. Unless you start leaving five minutes late because you know you can. In which case you’re a lost cause.

Timetable your day

Get a piece of paper and divide it into three columns – high priority, medium priority and low priority. Then give your tasks a place in one of the columns, for instance, meeting colleague for working lunch = low priority, but nipping out for a fag = high priority, etc… Then estimate the length of time each task will take and start working down the high priority column.

Avoid distractions

Mainly chatting. Yes, gossiping to other colleagues or to friends on the phone or via email creates a gaping chasm of lost time. If you want to get a grip on it, buy an egg timer. Set it when the ‘chat’ begins and cut it short when ‘your egg is ready’.

Give up smoking

Tot up your fag breaks and you’ll find you’re wasting an enormous amount of time. Just buy lots of nicotine chewing gum instead.

Give up coffee

Making hot drinks in the office is a time waster extraordinaire. Not only might you be caught in a queue, but you might even have the opportunity to strike up an interesting conversation that has nothing to do with work.

Give up alcohol at lunch time

However much you may tell yourself that after lunch you still have four whole hours before you go home, remember that time seems to evaporate into thin air after a sesh of lunchtime drinking. Especially when you’ve got your head on the desk and your mouth open…

Learn to multitask

Yes, the art of being able to undertake more than one task at a time is a skill that can be honed to perfection. If you’re a woman. If you’re a man, forget it. Men can only do one thing at a time… slowly.

Don’t call pointless meetings

Not that you thought they were pointless at the time of course. Ask yourself: “Is this really necessary?” or will everyone drone on ad infinitum without reaching a conclusion? Chances are the latter’s true, however deep the crisis.

Repeat the mantra:

“I am not a last-minute Larry. I know that time waits for no man and I will never miss the coach for the company bonding weekend again.”

Come clean

See your boss and ’fess up. Ask to go on one of those cringeingly American “time management courses for idiots”. You never know it might just beat the sluggard out of you…