When I give time management training one of the tips I suggest is to recognise when you just don’t have time to do a particular activity, you stop trying to shoe-horn it in to an already stressed and busy life and say – “I just don’t have time to do this at the moment.” The three words “at the moment” are important. They mean that you are not admitting defeat to ever getting around to a task; instead you are making the decision that you just don’t have space right now or are not willing to prioritise it. These three words leave the door open to the fact that you do fully intend to do the activity at some point in the future. You can then stop exhausting yourself trying to do it all safe in the knowledge that this is just a temporary hiatus on the activity.

For me this meant that I could not continue to do all of my marketing and networking activities for Lead The Life and have enough time to devote to writing a book. Now that the manuscript is more or less complete I am really enjoying picking up the marketing activities again.

American coach, Michael Neill, uses an analogy of fitting rocks, pebbles, sand and water in a jar to illustrate how to prioritise our time. The challenge is to fit as much of the rocks in the jar as possible. It all comes down to in which order you put them. If you put in the water and sand first then there isn’t room for the pebbles and the rocks. If you go for the pebbles first then you still can’t get the rocks in. The trick is therefore to put the rocks in first then let the pebbles fall into the space between the rocks. The sand can then fall into the remaining spaces and you can top up the jar with some of the water.

As far as time management goes, the rocks represent the activities that you really want to do. Fit those in your day and your week first. Then fill up the remaining time with less important or less fun activities. If you let your time get filled up with the wrong stuff then you won’t be able to fit in what is most significant to you.

One of my rocks has been writing the book and my pebbles have been other ’should do’ activities. The book was such a large rock that I had to make some tough decisions on the other pebbles. Of course, if I stopped my marketing activities forever then my business would grind to a halt but for the time it took to get the book written they were a necessary exclusion.

What are you trying to squeeze into your life right now that just doesn’t fit? Would it be less stressful to say – “I just don’t have time to do this at the moment?” Can you make plans for when it is more possible in the future?

I saw the latest Sex And The City movie a few days ago. My verdict: not impressed! I don’t want to get into a rant of how bad I thought it was (bearing in mind that I am a huge SATC fan and loved the last movie) but my main exclamation at the end of the film was: “What on earth were they thinking?!”

Then last night, after I arrived home from the theatre, I was doing a spot of light channel flicking on the telly and came across the very first episode of the TV series. 1998 seems a very long time ago. I was 32 at the time, the same age as Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte, and as a single girl living in Central London some aspects of my life were not dissimilar to theirs.

My first thought when casting my mind back to 1998 was that although I had enjoyed an exciting, high octane lifestyle I was quite often depressed about the fact that I was single. For me 1998 was the year of a significant heart break brought about by unrequited love.

Back then I used to obsess about the factors that made me unhappy on a constant basis for weeks or months on end. When I look at my life today, I don’t do that anymore. If something bothers me now it only lasts for a day or two and then I get back on an even keel. I think that over the years I have learned to be happy as I am and I enjoy a much deeper level of self acceptance. That has, at last, brought the most wonderful man in my life and I have a much more fulfilling working life now. Ironically when we constantly obsess about what we don’t have we seem to prevent those desires from entering our lives.