Make no mistake: the effect of getting to grips with time management can be considerable and varied. It can:

- Affect your efficiency, effectiveness and productivity. This alone makes your attitude to time management very important, for it affects your work day by day, hour by hour, all the time.

- Condition the pressure that goes with any job.

- Create greater positive visibility. Time management is something that will influence how you are perceived by others within the organisation. Good time management is an overriding factor that can differentiate people of otherwise equal talent and ability, making it more likely that some will succeed better in career terms than others.

Thus, although it may take some time, getting to grips with your own personal system of time management is immensely important. Time management must be seen as synonymous with self-management; it demands discipline, but discipline reinforced by habit. In other words, the good news is that it gets easier as you work at it. Good habits help ensure a wellorganised approach to the way you plan and execute your work. On the other hand, bad habits, as many of us are aware, are difficult to shift. And the changing of habits is something that may well be a necessary result of any review of how you work.

Making time management work for you is based on two key factors: how you plan your time and how you implement the detail of what you do. The first of these, which is reviewed in the early part of this book, creates an important foundation upon which you can then build and work. The second consists of a multitude of operational factors, practices, methods and tricks, all of which can individually and positively affect the way in which you work. Such factors may be absurdly simple, for example, visibly checking your watch from time to time will tend to make visitors less likely to overstay their welcome, especially if such checks are accompanied by the appropriate look of concern. Or they may demand more complexity, for example, a well-set-up filing system can save time, ensuring that you can locate papers quickly and accurately.

Other factors may be downright sneaky, like having a private signal to prompt your secretary to interrupt a meeting with news of something demanding its rapid curtailment or your prompt departure. Furthermore, there is a cumulative effect at work here. This means that the more you adopt or adapt the tricks of the trade that work for you, the more time efficient you become. This is a process that most of us can continue to add to and work on throughout our career. So, unless you are a paragon of time-efficient virtue, a review of whether you are working in the best possible way is nearly always worthwhile. Indeed, it can pay dividends to keep a regular eye on this throughout your working life. This too can become a habit.

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