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Time is valuable and yet we squander it because we are frightened of having to do things we don’t want to do or haven’t the confidence to do. Chief among these scary activities is thinking. We would rather do things than think about them. Reflection on the information we have and on our plans for the future (immediate or longer-term) is not as much fun as looking busy and important. A major example of deliberate time-wasting is the proliferation of ‘procedures’.

Procedures are a waste of time but systems are not. The difference? Productivity.

Procedures are put in place to disperse the responsibility for what happens from the person in charge to one someone lower down. ‘The world may fall apart but it wasn’t in my job description to stop it doing so”. Procedures invariably slow business down.

I have just come from a bank in Europe where I was trying to transfer a modest sum of money. At their request I took them a perfectly cogent letter with all the facts they needed logically set out and all the signatures and security confirmations they required. However, they made me fill in a form, saying that it couldn’t be done without. So I filled in the form as best I could – forms seldom provide space for the vital matters you have to communicate. The bank clerk was happy that I had filed in the form. She didn’t check it (‘not her job’). She tore off the BANK copy and gave it to me. It seemed to please her. Whether the transfer will ever go through is a moot point. I doubt it. From the bank clerk’s point of view everything was lovely. She had her form. She had followed ‘The Procedure’.

Systems, on the other hand, are there to facilitate and speed up the work, to improve efficiency. They are not intended to make individuals less responsible but rather to make their work more productive. A good system significantly reduces the number of procedures.

If you want to see the perfect example of procedures wrecking a business study the National Health Service in Britain. A great social concept when it started, it now employs more managers than doctors and nurses combined. These managers cost so much and slow up the work so badly that towards the end of the financial year hospitals start closing wards and deferring operations just to push the expense into the next financial year. By doing so they will have fulfilled the procedure that is required of them.

Excessive systems can be unnecessary and wasteful, too. These four questions constitute the acid test about a new system:

[a] What benefits will flow, to whom and when?

[b] What work, effort or cost will be significantly reduced?

[c] What is the cost of introducing the new system, in money and additional work?

[d] Why don’t we leave the present system alone if it is working?

I don’t know the figure – nobody does – but I suspect that almost half the systems introduced would not pass the test of these questions. So why do they get adopted? To stop people having to reflect on the real opportunities and problems of their business.

If you were expecting me to talk about organisers, planning your time properly, punctuality and monitoring your daily work this article will have disappointed you. All those things are important, of course, but you know that without my telling you.

Good time management is about only two things: priorities and reflecting on the real issues.

Not enough time to do that? You’ve just made my point for me.