It seemed strange to me. If the begetters are themselves so expert at managing time, why did they require one-and-a-half days, spread over a month, to pass their nuggets on to others? Could they not knock it off at one sitting, in an hour maximum? I am sure Delia Smith would only need a few minutes of prime-time television (“Here’s a checklist I prepared earlier”).

The next one was a three-hour workshop entitled Clearing your Desk. Given a big brush and a waste bin I could have cleared mine in three minutes. I cannot see the point of attending a course on it and still have to disencumber the damned thing.

Anyway, I like an untidy desk. It is in complete harmony with my untidy mind.

The world in which I live is not tidy. My desktop is a painstaking work of modern art, a future Turner Prize winner, reflecting perfectly the problematic nature of both the universe and the human condition.

Top of my list of courses to attend only if submitted to rack and thumbscrews, and there is no guarantee nowadays that this might not be a possibility for the reluctant managee, was a two-day workshop: Stress Awareness and Coping with Pressure. Two whole bloody days, again a month apart. I would be a certified maniac by the end of it, salivating, gibbering incoherently, led away gently but firmly to the Kenneth Baker Rest Home for Broken Pedagogues.

I once went to a workshop on stress. Never again. Everyone was completely tranquil, until the smug prat running it refused to start the session on time because he wanted to finish his cup of tea at leisure, saying he was showing us how relaxed he was. This and a few other self-indulgent moves successfully turned an amiable audience into foaming psychopaths, sinews standing out like ropes.

That rich experience was second only to another session on “group-building skills” in which we had to complete two jumbled up jigsaw puzzles. I was told off by the organiser for spotting that one of the puzzles had a black streak running along the edge of each of its wooden pieces, so we split into two sub-groups and completed the puzzles within a few minutes of silence.

Apparently we should have struggled for a while over leadership and fallen out with each other. The wizard organising the course would then have patched us up and honed our group-building skills. If there is a shortcut, take it, was my conclusion. Bugger the fineries.

In one university department that had not done well in its external assessment they all got together and played those ice breaking games so beloved at the beginning of management courses.

An excellent paper written by one member on what needed to be done was left undiscussed, while people who had worked together for years rushed round with labels on their backs guessing who was Michael Jackson and who Kylie Minogue. It was a rum solution to their ills, creating tension rather than relieving it.

I did once go to a course on time management. The only thing I remember now is the suggestion that you should have two in-trays, one for urgent and one for non-urgent business. I still use this system. The “urgent” tray works brilliantly, as it is empty. Unfortunately the “non-urgent” tray is two-feet high. So I talk to myself about it.

“You could throw that report away now.”

“Yes, but I might need it one day.”

“Well file it then.”

“Under what?”.

“How about’QCA’?”, “That’s already got 15 fat folders and three bookshelves.”

We all end up with a unique time management system to suit our personality and the context in which we operate. Like everyone else on the planet I am adept at deferring the things I don’t want to do. Don’t want to write something? Sharpen three more pencils. Odd that, since I use a word processor.

Clever people make procrastination respectable by calling it “prioritisation”.

I simply work long hours and get there in the end, grossly inefficient I know. If only I were smarter about it I would be able to clear at least a day-and-a-half during February and March. Then I could go on that time management course.