WHEN Tom Hanks starred in Cast Away, it brought back childhood memories of Robinson Crusoe. But most people don't realise that he had fantastic time-management skills.

After all, apart from Robinson Crusoe, who else do you know who gets all his work done by Friday?

On a serious note, time is one of the few things that money can't replace. Once it is lost or wasted, time is gone forever. And we don't have anywhere near as much of it as we think because:

A 30-year-old man has, on average, only 233,600 waking hours until he dies!

A 40-year-old man has 175,200 hours

And a 50-year-old man has only 116,800 hours

We owe it to ourselves to use that time wisely. So we must master the art of time management - ie create the time to start working on the really important things. The strategic things that will:

drive your business forward

help you to achieve your goals

turn your business dreams into reality

improve the quality of your life

You need to focus on the end results rather than the things you do. Many people employ what David Maister calls the "Donkey Strategy" for achieving more, ie working longer hours to earn more. But with good time management you will work smarter, not harder.

But how do you find the time to do these strategic things, when all your time is being taken up doing the technical things, the things that you know how to do?

It means you have to change the way you think about your business and your personal life, find the time to do the really important things and create the time to get where you want to go.

To identify what you want from your business, you first have to ask: "Are you doing the right things for yourself?"

These are the basis of your personal goals which must always be SMART:

S - Specific, ie retire with £1,000,000 instead of a lot of money

M - Measurable, ie my children to get a degree instead of a good education

A - Awesome, ie it must fill you with excitement and inspiration otherwise you won't see it through

R - Realistic, ie challenging goals are great, but keep your feet on the ground

T - Timed, ie retire by 2020 instead of retire eventually

Does the Gap analysis in the end column suggest that you need to make changes in order to achieve your goals? If it does, what changes are you going to make? This then raises the question "Are you doing the right things as a business?"

Look at the amount of time you spend working IN the business on inward-facing activities - eg business management, people management, administration. Estimate how much time you would like to spend on this kind of work. How much do actually spend? What is the gap?

Do the same with working IN the business on customer facing activities - eg winning new customers, serving existing customers - and working ON the business - eg winning strategies for your firm, better ways of serving customers, the skills and knowledge of your team.

Do you need to make changes in order to achieve your goals? Here are ten practical ways to do that:

Relevant? The most important way you can ever use your time is to decide what is most important, and then do it. Look at each task and ask 'will this move me closer towards achieving my goals?' If not, only do that task after you have done the other tasks that will.

Remember the 80:20 rule. ie that 20% of the effort usually generates 80% of the results.

Use the above tests to draw up a prioritised "To Do" list every day.

According to Sir John Harvey-Jones, "leaders should only do what only they can do". Delegate the work for which you are overskilled.

Having mastered the art of delegation, help everyone else to master it too. That way, everybody will be able to delegate large parts of their workload.

Make meetings quicker, more effective and less wasteful by: holding them standing up, holding them at 5.30pm, circulating a written agenda beforehand and agreeing an action plan before departing.

Work out your 'prime time' - the time of the day that you are most creative and productive - and reserve that part of each day for your most important tasks.

Don't procrastinate, especially with seemingly difficult or unpleasant tasks.

Invest in a small hand-held dictating machine. Carry it with you whenever you are on the move, and use it to dictate letters etc and to capture all those great ideas that tend to crop up at the least convenient times.

And finally, remember..now is all the time you have, so never say "I'd like to but I don't have the time" again.

Now, like Robinson Crusoe, you too can look forward to getting all your work done by Friday.