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Time is not on our side. We do not even know how much our allotted time on earth is. We have to make the most of what we have. Running round ever faster in ever-decreasing circles is the most popular form of time management. Senior managers appear addicted to it. They tend to believe that a full diary, 200 emails a day, dinners every evening, shows that they are important and busy.

Being late for each appointment is a way of reinforcing the point that they are busy and important. This is not time management; it is an ego trip where activity is a substitute for efficiency or effectiveness. Because senior managers do this, junior management copy them and the office is full of people chasing each others' tails.

A standard study is to look at what managers do during the day. This is old-fashioned time and motion. It is worth doing to yourself. In one case I found a middle manager who was well respected as someone who got things done and sorted things out. Over the course of eight hours he had the following profile:

Eighty-two phone calls. Seventy-four of them were either inbound calls, or outbound calls to fix the issues raised by the inbound calls. Sixty-three face-to-face interactions. Fifty-nine were fixing inbound issues (fire fighting) Four were arranging travel for the following week. Three formal meetings, which were not his. They were other people's agendas. He was late for each.

He never had more than two minutes between phone calls, a face-to-face interaction or a meeting. This time was used to read or respond to some of the 70-plus e-mails he received. At the end of the day, the wheels had not fallen off the business, but it had not moved forward.

The question for management is: 'Are they simply stopping the wheels coming off or are they moving the business forward?' The danger signs are:

	fragmentation of time:
	lack of focus on a few things;
	reactive not proactive agendas;
	internal versus external focus; reporting and fixing versus proposing and doing.

Test your own time against these four criteria.

Would you say you are truly being effective or just being busy? What's the difference? An old friend from California visited President Reagan at the White House. They had a leisurely lunch. They played golf. The President then invited the friend back for the evening.

The visitor was astonished: 'Don't you need to get to any meetings? Don't you need to be running the nation?' he asked. The President looked surprised and said, 'No, I've plenty of good people doing all that for me.'

 Working all day and all night is not prerequisite for success. We all know of someone who is apparently lazy and still successful. The lazy way to success depends on three things: 

·       Being very good at something (Reagan, the great communicator). This requires real focus effort and commitment.

·       Delegating like crazy. Know what you are not good at, and let other people do it. Give them the glory. The business will be better for it, and so will you.

·       Focusing on what is important. Have clear personal objectives, which will help you prioritize what you will do.

Time management is 10 per cent about being efficient in what you do, 90 per cent about knowing what you will not do.

Businesses have a duty to help staff manage their time properly. At a trivial level, this can mean things like a concierge service to stop staff being distracted by the administrivia of home life. At a more fundamental level, it is about organizing work well.