Top in the list of ‘time wasters' in R. Poornalingam's Your 27 Hour Day: Everybody's guide to find three extra hours daily (www.pqp.in) is the malaise of endless meetings.

He urges bosses to first attempt other ways of tackling an issue before deciding to fix a meeting. Suggesting that meetings could be restricted to two or three in a day and scheduled in fixed slots, the author also recommends avoiding meetings altogether on specific days so that you can focus on your priority tasks without any diversion, thereby enhancing your productivity.

To make meetings deliver, Poornalingam's advice is to have a definite agenda, with notes bringing out the pros and cons of the issues to be discussed. That way, the participants will be better informed of the subject, he reasons.

The second major time waster that the book discusses is visitors. “An effective way to regulate visitors is through appointments. Another excellent way to handle visitors is to set apart a specific time for them; you will then be able to concentrate on your work without interruptions during the rest of the day.”

Third in the list is the problem of telephones and e-mails.

The book offers tips to get around the tyranny of the telephone — by using an answering machine or working from a place that does not have a telephone.

An insightful foreword, aptly written by Bhaskar Bhat of Titan Industries Ltd, reminds that time has been expressed at several levels, namely, the physical (60 minutes in an hour), the mental (speed is a function of distance and time), the emotional (time is precious), the spiritual (the time is always right to do what is right), and the financial (time is money). “Taken at any level, it is still part of our very being and it is only when we value every moment are we able to fully benefit from this gift of time,” Bhat counsels.

Ready takeaways to harvest the many minutes that go in vain every day!

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