Their theories have provoked a new way of looking at time (or, if you prefer, life) as, rather oddly, a pickle jar. Think of a jar. Then try putting in objects the size of a golf ball, say. Even when it's filled with all the balls it can hold, it will not be quite full, so you slip in some marbles and give it a shake. The golf balls will rearrange themselves and let the marbles slip down. There's still a little space near the top. So throw in some sand and shake again. There's still some air in there, so now add water and it's full to the brim. The pickle jar is your life. The golf balls represent goals and commitments that are important such as, say, your marriage, job and children. The marbles are goals that might never be realised but they still matter, such as mastering an instrument or getting a PhD. As for the sand, this is the 'to do' list stuff that robs us of our time: emails, dinner-party planning, car maintenance. Water is time spent doing utterly irrelevant things such as watching reruns of Peep Show or matching up socks. Most of us have things we really want to do (take up yoga, plan an adventure abroad, write a book) but postpone until tomorrow because we get distracted by an easier task such as flicking the remote control.
Mark Barnes, an associate at Ashridge Business School in Hertfordshire and author of Time to Think: Seize Control of Your Time and Your Life, agrees that the key to managing time is to define your goals: 'If you want to be the greatest father in the world then you're not likely to be a multimillionaire, too.' He also warns that you should work out your approach to those goals: 'For some people trying really hard at most things is important; for others it's about being very good at just one thing.' According to Barnes, first you should decide who you are and what matters to you most, then fit the rest in. 'The most effective people go to work with a plan. They don't just turn on the computer and respond,' he says. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't and a towering figure in business coaching, hardly ever works past 6pm. His theory is simple: write 'a stop-doing' list. Collins decided to focus on writing and rid his jar of the sand and water. He calls it a Fixed Schedule Effect and it relies on discipline. You must cull tasks and appointments from your routine and 'risk mildly annoying or upsetting people in exchange for your time'. Collins says, 'I don't have sanctimonious auto-responders on my email, I just do what I do and people adapt.' To get there, he simplified his lifestyle. Some people I know complicate theirs with two homes, children in different schools and charity committees, and then wonder why everything they do is half-baked.
However, many people strapped for time are just trying to hold it together, not run multinational corporations. They would love to have a life full of just golf balls but at best they have a few marbles and then rolling dunes of sand. Collins advises us to use the 'time/life' swap: 'I don't have life to see my friends' sounds depressing, but 'I don't have life to bake organic carrot cupcakes' sounds sensible. As childbirth guru Christine Hill said, 'The best mothers are slobs.' I spent far more time Cillit-Banging the kitchen counters than talking to my sons when they were little.
After my Paris taxi encounter, I made a chart of my own. I had two categories of goal: long- and short-term and included everything from friends to work, family to fitness. It was an eye-opener. I realised that going to the gym may look like a short-term goal but ultimately it needed a big slice of my time as my future health (life) will rest largely on what I invest now.