Time management might well be the most important aspect of any working day. It is certainly an area in which it is all too easy to relinquish control to outside forces. There are so many reasons why your plan can be knocked off track and yet it must be seen as a mistake. Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt, in their book 'The Power of Focus', put forward the idea of the four D's as an approach to effective time management:

• Do it now
• Dump it
• Delegate it
• Defer it

Do it now.

Do it now if it can be done quickly and if it is important and productive enough. But there is a warning that apparently urgent intrusions should be carefully assessed to make sure they are not distracting from more important longer term strategies.

Dump it.

If what you are being asking to do does not serve your purpose, if it does not fit into the defined mission of your company, then you can and should politely and firmly refuse.

Delegate it.

It is crucial to know who has the skills required for the task you wish to delegate. Then it is important to be able to trust them to get on with it. If you have hired the right staff then a reluctance to delegate can only be the manager's problem. Canfield et al point out that many leaders associate 'Delegate' with 'Dump'. What does this say about your staff? or your attitude to them?

Defer it.

This is not a procrastinator's charter. If a task is deemed essential and productive and it cannot be done in the time immediately available, it should be scheduled. It should be scheduled for a time when it will have your undivided attention.

Apply the four D's to your plans.

You can use the four D's to help you to structure your response to every aspect of your business plan. Your mission statement, your five year action plan and your daily to do list will all benefit from the scrutiny which the four D's will put them under.

It will be very useful to be able to answer why after each 'D'.

Do it now! Why? etc.

Only tasks of central importance to your stated mission should be making it on to the Do it now, Delegate it or (precisely scheduled) Defer it list. The rest should be Dumped. If tasks are regularly getting on to the wrong list then finding out why will tell you a lot about what needs to change.