A month ago I was responsible for a column a week in The Times. Now, with this slot, it is two. And while it's debatable to what degree such musings can count as “work”, I hope it's not too contentious to claim that my workload has recently doubled. And this, together with other commitments, has created one of the oldest conundrums of business life: time management.

It is also one of the most tedious conundrums of business life. For years publishers have been producing tiresome books with titles such as Juggle! and Rethink Work!, proffering the same old tips, such as “combine housework with working out!” and “have meetings standing up!”

But things have livened up since the publication of Timothy Ferriss's American bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, in which the author claims that he went from earning $40,000 a year, working 80 hours a week, to earning $40,000 a month working just four hours by following a set of rules that are perhaps best labelled “extreme time management”.

They include: stop taking phone calls (let everything go to voicemail and pick up messages occasionally); give up on meetings (unless they are for making decisions, in which case let them go on no longer than 30 minutes); and hire virtual assistants in India to manage your e-mail inbox, screen phone calls, send gifts to family and friends and even schedule online dates.

Initially I was sceptical about Ferriss's advice, but to my surprise I've recently found myself resorting to it, especially in relation to phone calls, and at the same time found myself developing some extreme time management tips of my own, which I should probably collate into a book, but, like I said, I don't have the time, so I may as well share the most useful ones with you here:

1. Answer electronic messages once a week, ideally between four and five on a Friday afternoon. This is a version of a tip that Ferriss has proffered, with the remark: “You wouldn't do a new load of laundry every time you have a dirty pair of socks.” And he's right: according to a joint study by Microsoft and the University of Illinois, it takes, on average, nearly 17 minutes for a worker interrupted by an e-mail to get back to what he or she was doing and, with the emergence of social networking, you can waste entire days if you respond to messages as they arrive. However, I wouldn't go as far as Ferriss in suggesting that you literally respond only once a week: you need to reply to urgent messages once a day at least, but one-line responses will often do and you don't need to compose longer responses to more speculative e-mails until the Friday 4-5pm “deathzone”, which, in my experience, because of the combination of exhaustion and the tantalising prospect of the weekend, is by far the least productive time of the week. The technique has the added advantage that those who have written to you in anger will hopefully have forgotten what they were cross about in the first place.

2. Do one thing until you get stuck, then do another. This is not the same thing as multitasking, which, a recent study from the University Of London has shown, doesn't work: apparently your IQ falls ten points if you try to respond simultaneously to e-mails, texts and phone calls. What I'm suggesting is that you concentrate, intensely, on one essential task, and when progress slows, move onto another essential task. Millions of man-hours are wasted each day staring at the same spreadsheet or Word document: walking away from something is often the most productive thing to do.

3. Save the name of everyone who calls your mobile into your contacts list. This may sound counter-productive and time-consuming, but ultimately it isn't. One can waste huge chunks of a day talking to people who have nothing to say, or who want you to do things you don't want to do, but if a name flashes up when they call, you can avoid them. Equally, I've never understood why people delete the numbers of people they've fallen out with: it may be superficially satisfying, but when they call or text you end up having to explain why you've deleted them.

4. Do your most essential work as early in the day as possible. We all know people who claim to be at their most creative and productive in the afternoon or evening, but they are freaks, or deluded. Research consistently shows that human beings are at their best first thing in the morning and to waste those precious hours answering e-mails and doing the “what muppet are you?” quiz on Facebook (I'm Fozzie Bear, by the way) is like running a Reliant Robin on jet fuel. I'm not the only person to feel this way. Will Self recently told The Times Magazine: “I tend to wake up at 7am and do half an hour of writing before having a cigarette and making a coffee. I feel that's the most fertile hour for ideas.” But should you struggle with the waking-up-early aspect of this, you should ...

5. Neck a load of water before going to bed. An idea originally gleaned from Chris Evans, who, in the days he was doing breakfast radio, remarked that he chose to broadcast in the morning because he had a weak bladder, which meant he was up at 3am anyway, so why not go to work while he was at it? Those of us blessed with better urinary retention can mimic the effect by resorting to Evian before bed, or by avoiding the loo. Think of it as a kind of biological alarm clock, one you really can't afford to ignore. Believe me, it works. Try it and let me know how it goes: I'll get back to you on Friday afternoon.

sathnam@thetimes.co.uk

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