“I don’t seem to cope – there’s too much to do – I never catch up.” Whether people consider themselves good or poor at time management, these are the sort of comments that I hear time and again as a business coach.

So when I confront people with the fact that I complete 85% – 90% of my set tasks in any given week, I am faced with looks of incredulity. How? Well, here’s the secret that I expounded to a client in Jerusalem this week.

1) Use a diary or calendar. Whether you use an electronic system or resort to a paper-and-pen method, find something that work, is readily accessible, ……….and stick to it.

2) Every task has to be written down – meeting, phone call to be made, visits to the doctor, whatever.

3) Differentiate between personal and private issues. Personally, I colour-code meetings in yellow and my family commitments in blue.

4) Divide your diary page into two – one side for meetings and one side for reminders or notes. Thus, when you are supposed to be in a meeting, you cannot allocate that time to call somebody, prepare a document or otherwise.

5) If your meeting is scheduled for an hour, ensure that you have also blocked off extra time to arrive and return – even if that only means popping out to another floor in the same building.

6) If you have one or a series of projects to complete, map them out in full. Define fully what tasks will need to be completed by when, and how much time each stage will require. Then, when those parts have been broken down, enter them individually into the diary. Thus, you should not be scheduling meetings when you have allocated time for that (equally?) important work.

All this can be summarised under Point 7 – be honest! Don’t try to pretend that you can cram 25 hours into 24 hours, because it rarely works. You are cheating nature and I do not know of too many people who get away with that for more than a brief period of ………..time.