Hang around in Agapé for long enough and you’ll be given a seminar on time management. Who wouldn’t like to be managed enough so they get the right stuff done?

You will likely get the training like this:

1. Prioritise the important over the urgent. You’ll have an A-list, a B-list and a C-list

2. Don’t list anything that you wouldn’t spend five minutes on next week

3. ‘A’ tasks would be ones that bring you towards your life goals. ‘B’ = your current work. Then there’s the sparkly ‘C’-list of exciting opportunities that seem to jump up and demand attention (seriously? how many of them are actually advertisements?!)

4. If an ‘A’ task is too uncomfortably big to fit into a list, break it down into its components.

5. Ask yourself clever questions like, ‘What’s the worst thing that would happen if I just didn’t do this particular task?’ and ’What can I delegate?’

So far, so good. I have benefitted hugely from going through this discipline. (Mind you, I sometimes think there should be a D-list where I could stash away ‘things I fondly and irrationally imagine I could do sometime, but in my heart, I just know it’s never going to happen’)

But recently I have had to learn few new tricks. Well, not tricks really but mercifully liberating life-hacks:

(i) You do all kinds of different tasks. Changing from one kind to the other is like changing gears – and that costs time and energy. Factor that in.

(ii) It’s not enough to work out how much disposable time you have in the day – you also need to think, ‘How much is there left in my emotional tank?’ Yes, there’s such a thing as an emotional tank level and it can easily run out faster than your time.

(iii) Once you’ve sorted out what needs to be done there will often be conversations you need to have with various people. Schedule the difficult conversations first. That will significantly reduce pressure on your tank.