Poor time management is seen as an individual’s problem, but the fix normally involves sending them on a cookie-cutter course about organising, to-do lists and prioritising. And maybe learning how to say “No” if there’s time at the end.

These courses don’t work, because they treat the symptoms, rather than the root causes. And all of the symptoms require the same treatment – their patented remedy, applied to just one person.

There are two problems:

• Time Management is really about self-management, it’s about psychology. It starts from the inside, how you are hard-wired to relate to time. Are you Future, Past or Present orientated?
• We all work within organisations and interact with customers, suppliers, partners and colleagues, making demands on each other’s time.

We cannot subdue time by behaviour change. Lack of time, is a cultural, systemic problem that no amount of self-organisation will solve.

It’s complicated.