Relationships and Police Time Management

It is a fault of many (most) time-management books and courses that an important influence over how well we spend our time is completely ignored. I don’t ignore it as much in Police Time Management .

Although that said, more could be written – but then this 300-page ‘practice manual’* could easily turn biblical in proportion and the objective is to apply useful strategies, not get a degree in the subject of time and self-management.

The missing heading is ‘Relationships’ and I KNOW some people stooped reading there but bear with me.

Relationships must, without question, be the biggest influence over time because its relationships that create, obstruct, enable and provide meaning to the tasks that fill it. Nothing we do is done unless it is done for, with or because of someone else. Victims report crimes; people have collisions on the roads; resources are obtained, disseminated and maintained by people other than users. And it isn’t necessarily a  matter of a one-to-one relationship – when interviewing a suspect there may be a solicitor, appropriate adult and an interpreter all in a small room, each with differing perspectives and needs that occasionally conflict – and that’s even before you say, “This interview is being video-recorded….)

Therefore, how you manage relationships matters. And before you do any of that, how you manage your part in the relationship matters. You can adopt a combative, confrontational approach but that wastes time. Even if the other parties adopt such an attitude, you’d be surprised how choosing to be flexible within the constraints of the ‘relationship’ (i.e. the rules which dictate any practices and protocols pursuant to the event undertaken) can result in beneficial compromise on the part of the ‘opposition’. And suddenly people aren’t arguing, demanding, insisting, competing for space, and so on.

In the book I include a chapter on Meetings, but expand the term to include one-on-ones, street and custody interviews, and even daily shift briefings. They’re all meetings, with different purposes yet the same ends – disseminating or obtaining information. And time is saved if the approach is properly considered and applied.

To be frank, a 500-word blog won’t cut it in terms of expanding on the subject, and I hope you don’t mind if I don’t merely quote verbatim from a book I’m trying to sell (cheaply).

The objective of this article is to re-open your eyes to a truth sometimes lost in the busy-ness of the working day – that communication is best conducted in two ways, not one. Not just telling it, but listening, too. And often, when combat begins, it can be calmed by a simple question carefully put (so it doesn’t sound sarcastic) – “What is your underlying concern?”

You see, people demanding stuff seldom start with an explanation of why they want it – they just make the demand. But when the demand has a reasonable motive clearly stated – how much time is saved when it can be granted for that very reason?  Or at least an agreement is made, one which addresses the concern rather than the demand, and is thus more emotionally balanced – and acceptable – “to all here present, M’Lud?”

Relationships – the poor, but important member of the time management family. Even defence solicitors need love.

(*About the same size as a Blackstone’s Promotion Guide on one of the four key areas, but a lot more useful if you aren’t seeking promotion. 😊)

The Failure’s Approach to Career Success

How do you define success, and how do you intend to pursue that? It’s an important pair of questions. What’s more, if you aren’t careful, the answer to the second question might just undermine your answer to the first.

How so?

When people start in policing there really only two directions for success. They are upwards and sideways – promotion or specialisation. I say there are only ‘two’ because even if you opt for specialisation you can still only then choose sub-specialisation or upward mobility, and the latter tends to be within that specialisation until you get giddy with how high you’ve got. But I do know that (in general) a failure to specialise at the beginning tends to result in an inability to specialise after promotion begins. It’s not a universal position but in general, if you ain’t in CID when you get your stripes, you generally can’t go back. (Or maybe that was just my own Force.)

Back to Q1. You’ve decided which direction it is you want to direct your efforts. Then you decide that you will get there ‘no matter what’. And it is that decision that will hamper your efforts. The decision to put that objective above all others – to strive, to push towards getting what you want.

Because we know what pushing tends to mean. ‘You are/that is in the way, so I will bypass (you/it) in my selfish effort to progress.’

Result? Broken relationships, warped attitudes, distrust from below and above, and the strange, ego-driven belief that ‘they’re all out to get me’ or the simply confused ‘I’ve done what I need to do; why hasn’t that got me what I want?’

Any worthy end requires a worthy means. As one old story put it, a man declared he would ‘earn a million whatever happens’, and when it didn’t happen as planned or as soon as he expected he started to cut corners, walk over people, bend rules and ignore processes and protocols. He got his million, lost his family (happens a lot), went broke and went to prison.

One of the things that most bemused me as a Fraud Squad Detective was observing that if the people I convicted had put as much effort into obtaining cash legally as they did through scheming, then they’d still have the money and not the conviction and small room behind a big wall. Seriously, the intelligence they displayed in their planning, and the effort involved in their scamming, would have made their lives pleasantly lucrative instead of ludicrously punitive. (I really stretched that one.)

My examples may not automatically register as valid in policing terms, but ask yourself: do you know or have you heard of anyone who either (a) lost their position, reputation, job or even their liberty in the pursuit of their definition of success or (b) you really hope will suffer those penalties because of the way they act towards people? The people in the second group my not suffer in an obvious manner, but I assure you even their reputational damage will bite them sooner or later.

The same questions (and consequences of response) apply just as much in your personal life as it does in your professional efforts. How would you want your relationships to go? How will you raise your kids? Will you earn buckets, never see them but feel content they each have an iPad with your picture on it? Or will you provide a home, time and love that they’ll remember for ever?

This is a time management blog, so you might be wondering what this has to do with it?

How much time will you spend regretting inappropriate motives and wasted efforts, and the loss of time you spent upon them, when defining your WHAT and your WHY properly at the outset will maximise your chances of achieving your answer to Question 1?

The last two chapters in my book will help you in saving a lot of time getting where you want to be so that you can enjoy it for a lot longer.

The Importance of Balance.

How many hours a week do you spend at work? (I don’t mean actually working because for a lot of us the two numbers are hugely different. 😊 )

During my 30 years’ service I was very conscious of two things. One: Many of my CID colleagues absolutely loved working 70-plus-hour weeks. ‘Look at all the money we’re earning,’ they would imply. Two: I loved going home on time. I did like more money, but I liked to earn it in one day’s overtime – say, in one 16-hour shift at the end of a set. All the bunce at once. ™

There is an old saying that once you find what you love to do and can get paid for it, you’ll never work another day in your life. That’s nice. Of course, it doesn’t take into account the admin and exterior demands over which we have no control – and no PA to do it for us. There is also an industry of personal development ‘experts’ that say ‘you can work half the time and earn twice as much’, but they were never working in the public sector, were they? I digress.

Something I noticed about many of those overtime-bandits was this: after years and years of ‘dedicated’ (mercenary) service, they were able to give their houses and half their income to their divorced partners. Which is my point.

Spending too much time at work does not serve the relationship you have with the person or persons you profess to ‘love’. They don’t want the money. They don’t want money problems either, but what they married or dedicated their emotions to – is you. So if you’re away at work all the time creating a better lifestyle at the expense of your relationship with the person with whom you want to live said lifestyle, you’re running a fool’s errand.

In the end, it is a question of balance. A balance between what you think you want, and what you know is good for you – both. (Add children as appropriate. Kids want things, but they also want attention. You can’t give kids attention from your policing workplace.)

The nice house. The nice car. The gadgets. The expensive holidays. They’re all wonderful things to have. But they are not needs. A new car is nice, but it’s rarely as good as the older one that’s just as big/powerful/well-equipped and does NOT require finance and return at the end of the lease. (I simply do not see the logic of ‘renting’ a car at the level that used to pay my mortgage.) A holiday in the Maldives is nice but a beach is a beach is a beach. A nice house is a nice house, but if you’re spending all your money on maintaining it, what are you missing out on?

I emphasise, though – it is a question of balance. You can have all of those things if you plan ahead, consider the pros and cons and sacrifices you may have to make – and you do so in partnership with the other people who will have to bear those sacrifices.

You don’t want to end up hearing about the things you kids did through Facebook or a solicitor, all because of your all-encompassing pursuit of what you thought you wanted at the expense of what you actually wanted.

I attended a course once, and the trainer asked, “Do you all want to improve your work-life balance?” “Yes!” came the unanimous reply.

“Right, let’s see just how much more work we can get out of you,” he continued.

Oddly, that’s not what we thought he meant.

Oddly, that’s still what so many people DO.

Think about it. Make the right choice, for the right reasons – and with the right people.

PC Winston S. Churchill. (If only……)

I have just finished a 982-page, teeny tiny font biography of Winston Spencer Churchill. It took about a month to read at about a chapter a day. Mammoth effort, amusing and informative experience. For example, did you know that when the Free French Army needed a wartime HQ in 1940 they were allocated Trafalgar House in Waterloo Place. Someone had a sense of humour.

Churchill was an exceptional man. Like me (and this is the only comparison I can justify) he was consistently criticised and attacked, and suffered many career setbacks – but always came back. I sympathise. There the comparison ends, because even I, a time management student, can’t match his being a politician, statesman, author, historian, philosopher, painter, lepidopterist, bricklayer (yes, true), public speaker, raconteur (there is a difference), pilot, sailor, combat veteran and reporter. (Actually the list is a lot longer but I’ve given the book back to the library.) He did NOT have a degree and was famed for failing exams. He held every Cabinet office except one. He was once Home Secretary.

He had neither MSWord nor t’Internet while he ran the UK during a World War. And you thought you were busy!

I’ve always felt that ‘busy’ is very much a state of mind. Don’t worry, mine’s been in a state, too. If busy means you truly have more to do than there is a time to do it, fair enough. But if you have time to self-generate process, to volunteer, to carry out directed and non-directed patrol, then no, you aren’t busy. You may be managing your time poorly, but if you have time to do routine stuff then you aren’t using that time for important stuff and so you are not overwhelmed – unless you decide that you are. That’s what I mean by a state of mind. You feel ‘busy’ but what you are actually feeling is the pressure of your mind reminding you, at the most inopportune moments, that you have something else to do that you aren’t doing now.

Your supervisor asks you to do something, and THEN you remember the things you have to do and haven’t done, and the ‘new’ thing feels like it’s competing with the ‘old’ things.

You’re not really busy. Your stuff is in an unmanaged pile in your brain. And as David Allen, author of ‘Getting Things Done’ opines, your mind is a poor place for storing stuff. And that is because it doesn’t have a filing system of any practical format. It’s just a big ol’ drawer, like your kids’ floordrobe. All the stuff is in all the places and pops up when it feels like it should and not when you need it to.

Churchill was a bit lucky. He had an immense capacity for remembering and ‘filing’ material in his head that he could retrieve at the drop of his cigar ash. (And a PA who could help, but that doesn’t detract from his abilities.)

What he also had, I would suggest, was the ability to recognise that he could not do everything at once, and to therefore allocate appropriate focus to one thing at a time. When he painted, he painted. When he planned a speech, he focused on it to the exclusion of everything else. (And you know how good his speeches were.) When he wrote his History of the English Speaking Peoples and his 6-volume history of the War, he focused on that. Then, when appropriate, he’d move on to the next thing and focus on that.

We aren’t all capable of retention of information like some, but I believe we are all capable of focusing on what we are doing now. When we do that, all the clutter that presses on us dissipates and doesn’t stress us. When we organise our stuff, we allocate appropriate attention and time to getting it done.

But no one teaches you that in the police, do they?

I do. HERE. You’re welcome.

You won’t read this to the end. Pity.

If you are, or know, a serving police officer or civilian, please read the foreword in my Amazon ‘LookInside’ page (CLICK HERE) before you read further.

Is that your experience, or that of your acquaintance? It was certainly mine. I spent years listening to colleagues bemoaning the ‘time/task’ imbalance – too little of the former, too much of the latter. Umpteen priorities, which were once led by demand but are now led by ‘priorities’. Did you know that word is derived from ‘prior’, meaning foremost, first above all? All too many leaders (and Ministries) think it means ‘How many different, competing and often irrelevant stuff can we make people think is important?’ ‘How much can we make them measure because we want them to measure it for us?’ You know it’s true.

As much as I might bang on about it, though, unless and until some true leaders appear at the highest levels – i.e. the Home Office and HMG – the fact remains that if we can measure it, they will. So things have to be done.

(Years ago, Mo Mowlem, then Home Secretary, announced an attack on bureaucracy. That same day, having happily provided 999 recordings on the basis of a phone call, introduced a form and submission process for it. You couldn’t make it up.)

Yet here we are, still wondering how to manage our time in the policing atmosphere. Yep, To Do Lists. Huge, ever-expanding bits of A4 paper which are full on Monday, and fuller on Friday. (Shift workers amend that as applicable.)

And that’s it. That’s your time management input for 21st Century policing in a nutshell. Of course you can rely on officers and staff to discover Outlook all by themselves! And to learn how to use it as a task manager as well as just for e-mail. (And even the training for that leaves a lot to be desired – as the ‘Reply All’ button usage would suggest.)

To be frank, you could easily fill two days with a (good) time management course. I believe you can do an effective job in one day, but even three hours on diary and list management could have a massive impact on police effectiveness and stress levels. But given the costs, buying your staff a book and inviting them to explore the content and resources it provides could be very cost-effective.

But no-one on LinkedIn appears to be reading this far. Which is a shame because I firmly believe that what I promote – whether you get it from me or elsewhere – is DAMN IMPORTANT.

If you HAVE read this far, how about letting me know – comment, like or even share.

Someone could benefit.

Police Time Management: Productivity for Law Enforcement Professionals: Amazon.co.uk:

Structure Promotes Freedom

When I retired I made an odd discovery, which I thought was personal until an equally retired ex-colleague made the same observation. We had both discovered that going from 40 hours a week to No hours a week massively reduced the amount of time we had left to get anything done.

Read that again. Not having a job meant we had less time to get anything done. WHAT!!??

After more gassing we made the following conclusion. It’s probably the experience most of you have (even if you can’t say it out loud). When we were in work (and we were 8-4, Mon-Fri specialists) we had a tendency to do some personal stuff when out and about doing our duty. If we were passing a shop we’d get what we suddenly realised we needed. You can have an ethical huff about that if you wish but I don’t know of any officer who didn’t do that. We just didn’t abuse the privilege. But we realised that having retired we now we had to do that ‘stuff’ in our own time – so it took longer!

Since then I have given it some deeper thought. The conclusion I came to was this.

In work we are subject to pressures and impositions that create a structure to our day. Arrive at work, prep the day, briefings, appointments, course and so on – in a job where things alter at the drop of a hat we are sub-consciously subject to a routine, a process. Even a new incident has a protocol in a sense, and our way of approaching it is based on experience and training, and in the context of what has gone before and what may come next.

Then we go home. Parkinson’s Law* applies and we have as long as we need to do something, and ‘as long as we need’ is not quite the same motivation as that provided by our duties in the workplace.

We go to work and abide by the ever-expanding To Do List, which I cover in great detail in my book, and work through and add to it as our working day proceeds. Then we go home – and rarely apply the same approach. On days off there is a tendency, therefore, to do what comes to mind. We open the fridge – “Oops, must go shopping.” We get into the car – “Oh, it’s telling me I need a service NOW!” We hear Wizzard’s “I wish it could be Christmas everyday” on December the 5th and think, “Damn. CHRISTMAS CARDS!!”

One of the main lessons in the book is that good time management applies all the time, and whatever level of time management you have adopted for work should also be utilised for your personal life. That might sound restrictive – but where’s the ‘freedom’ in that sudden need to go shopping, or in changing your plan for the garage mechanic’s convenience, or in cancelling a morning run because you have 25 friends who’ll be offended by their lack of a Christmas card?

The Plan serves freedom because having a plan means you can ensure time is available for that freedom.

You see, those ‘longer days’ when my friend and I couldn’t seem to get everything done – were the result of no longer having to do things because of duty. We now had as long as we needed to get things done, and as long as we needed was too long!

Structure, whether imposed or voluntarily accepted, promotes the ability to plan execution of all priorities around each priority, and allows us to create space where we can use our freedom to act for ourselves in light of those priorities.

If you prefer having no structure, ask your Sergeant if you can work when you feel like it. I’m guessing she or he will just jump at the chance to help you be free.

*Parkinson’s Law states that “Work expands to fit the time available for its completion.” This is his famous one. He has another. “The administrative arm of an organisation expands over time at the same rate as the operational arm shrinks.” How big is YOUR admin section these days?

The Christmas Excuse. Bin it.

Here we go again. ‘Tis the season to be merry, and in that spirit I anticipate entry into the annual merry-go-round that is the promise that “I’ll do it when we get Christmas out of the way,” I say merry-go-round because without any doubt whatsoever you know someone who says that and then, immediately after Christmas, replaces that festival with ‘New Year’, ‘Half-term’, ‘Easter’, ‘kid’s exams’, ‘the holidays’, ‘new school year’ and ‘we’re back to Christmas’. I do. I’ve forgotten what our oak dining table looks like, it’s been used as a laundry depot for so long. That’s other people dealt with. Now you/me.

These promises parallel the traditional New Year’s Resolutions, promises made to ourselves in respect of which we excuse inaction for similar reasons. This year I suspect it’ll be, “Well, New Year’s Day is a Friday, and I’ll be sleeping the night off. Then it’s the weekend so I won’t start then. I’m back at work on Monday the 4th, I’ll give it the beans then. Oh, look at all this work that built up because of my Christmas excuse, I’ll just get that out of the way….” And the failure loop spins ever onwards.

That’s the easy option, the comfortable one. The one that almost relies on stuff to happen so that we can excuse the lack of the one thing that changes everything*.

Self-discipline.

There is a continuum that runs from ‘things we like to do’ to ‘things we hate doing’. As the line runs from left to right, the levels of discipline required to do those things rises exponentially. People applaud the successful athlete and artiste, and it is true that the greats have imposed self-discipline on themselves, but I believe that their self-discipline is a reflection of the fact that they are doing what they love. It’s minimally required.

I believe in this motto:

Self-discipline is doing the things you don’t want to do because doing them serves you; Self-Denial is NOT doing the things you want to do, because doing them does NOT serve you.

To me, that couplet defines part of the route to success in any endeavour. Not all of it, because character and competence play an extremely important role as well.

In essence, the time we spend fighting against having to make the choice to do/not do what is under consideration would be better spent elsewhere.

Which means that immediately ‘Christmas is OVER’ you decide what levels of discipline you are willing to exercise in each of the roles you play in the great movie called Life, and then you start executing on that choice vigorously. Make the Hard Choice, or more pertinently Make the Harder Choice. When you don’t want to do something that you’ve decided serves you and that you privately committed to doing – Do It. Do It Now.

Author Mel Robbins wrote a whole book about the idea that when you think, “I have to….” Then you count down 5-4-3-2-1 and then just do it. I have used this to get out of bed on a cold morning, among other, more challenging choices. You can use it to go for a run, clean the car, actually do the things you said you’d do ‘after Christmas.

The time and mental effort you save will astound you.

Happy Christmas. Enjoy the break – you have a lot to do when it’s over.

(*Stephen Covey Jr says that is Trust, but my experience tells me otherwise.)

Notice how COVID hasn’t reduced your workload?

How has COVID affected your time management?

If you are anything like I was, you are frustrated that the imposition of new work – work which doesn’t necessarily ‘float your boat’ – has meant delaying all those other tasks, appointments and commitments that you (dare I say) ‘real’ police work created nearly a year ago. The victims you care about have been poorly served by circumstances beyond your control, but Force priorities conflict between ‘Do this NOW’ and ‘Why haven’t you done THAT?’

Two thoughts. First of all – it’s been like that since Bobby Peel invented you. New work has been coming down the tracks since the first Booby made his first arrest and was told off because while he was processing Bill Sykes, someone else burgled Pickwick’s Newsagents. It’s an occupational hazard.

Second – and bear with me for just a few minutes – your inability to manage is partly your fault. Not wholly your fault, mind – just partly. Why?

Well, first of all the bit that isn’t your fault is the failure of the Service to provide any meaningful time management training above and beyond what your Tutor showed you. And s/he learned that by themselves, too.

The part that is your fault is also a bit environmentally-influenced, in that you have bought into the ‘everything is urgent’ paradigm, which means that you tend to focus on the ‘NOW’ at the expense of the ‘REST’. The fear, as it were, of the potential for yet another interruption requires that you focus only on what is in front of you and literally procrastinate everything else. And then you wonder why (given the Bill Sykes experience) all the ‘old’ stuff is still waiting for attention after all your diligent focus was expended on today’s priority.

When I was a Divisional DC I would, as would many, be drafted in for major incidents. What I noticed was that everyone on those incidents (other than the Major Incident Team itself) stopped all work on their ‘day jobs’. Then, after the who-knows-how-long on the murder they’d go to their in-trays and find a plethora of unread messages, incomplete files and associated CPS demands that they’d deliberately ignored while on the Major.

I didn’t. I recognised that an inordinate amount of Major Incident time is spent waiting around – and it was those periods which I used to catch up and act upon those things which I could reasonably fit in without negatively influencing the Big Jobby. Instead of just chillin’, like so many colleagues who, when it was over, felt ‘stress’ because of the overflowing admin bomb they’d let fester.

Productivity isn’t just about filling your hours and looking busy. It isn’t ‘I am walking about with a memo in my hand therefore I am productive’. (As some did.)

Productivity is about managing yourself in the context of the time available, in order to allocate the appropriate amount of time and attention to those things which you can reasonably be expected to achieve during your working hours. No more, no less.

When I promote Productivity for Law Enforcement Professionals in my book I am not asking you to do more. I am helping you to do what you have to do in a more controlled, prioritised and appropriate manner. There is a whole chapter on this very phenomenon, the ‘Do Everything’ approach that just creates stress while achieving very little.

Think about what you are doing instead of blindly just ‘doing’.

You’ll find it intellectually stimulating as well as extremely calming.

The Timeless Wisdom – of a Teenager

Yesterday, ten days after publishing my book, I was researching via YouTube and came across a video by a very young African-American lady named Tonya. She was asked a question and her reply was wise, well-considered – and one I hadn’t thought of myself. I wish I’d heard it before I published!

The first chapter of my book is ‘Why NOT Time Management’, and later on in its pages I address the advantages and disadvantages of paper and digital planning. Murphy’s Law dictated that Tonya, one third of my age (or even less), came up with the missing one.

Tonya, whose YouTube account is called TonyaPlans, was asked why she preferred paper planning to electronic planning and she replied by first picking up her smartphone and asking how often, when you pick your phone up to do something, do you see or hear a notification and start a routine of answering messages, checking social media and surfing the net in a mental chain of events where one ‘thing’ leads inexorably to another. In a nutshell she was explaining that the reason paper is better than digital is because

Paper. Doesn’t Ping.

It doesn’t distract anywhere near as much as your digital world. With paper, you pick it up, read what it says (or make your entry) and move on. A paper planning system doesn’t have pop-up ads that make you think, “I must get that new iWatch while it’s so cheap” after which you spend an otherwise useful 20 minutes organising and making a purchase of something you don’t need. And after that, you find yourself asking, “Now, why did I pick up my phone?”

You can choose what you can do with paper. With a computer and a printer you can even design planner pages so that they suit your situation and aren’t the best guess of a corporate designer. With paper, you decide what information comes first, and where you keep it. With paper, you can decide that even if you don’t want it in your system just now, you can file it elsewhere with ease. (That is from a planning perspective – of course you can keep it on your computer.)

In one of the many source books I possess, the author wrote of a training session where a participant, asked what was important to him, replied, “Reading.” The presenter asked, “Are you reading as much as you’d like?” Getting a ‘No’ in response, he asked why not?

“Books don’t ring.”

As a rule, people hate interruptions, particularly in those moments when they are in the flow. Interruptions break that flow and recovery is often nigh on impossible. Yet those of us who have accidentally become trained by our devices happily allow a ping or a bleep or a buzz or a song or even a vibrate to interrupt us, and as we tut and moan we STILL pick up that device, ‘just in case’.

How dull are we?

It’s too late in the history of Man and Woman to divest ourselves of our devices. But we can stop making ourselves complicit in our over-reliance on them by returning to using them primarily for their original means – controlled communication – and stop using them for everything, particularly our personal planning. (To be frank, mobile phones aren’t great for planning on the go, anyway.)

Many CEOs have tried digital lives only to return to using paper as their primary planning tool.

You might consider doing the same.

I can help – buy my very inexpensive book.

Police Request!

I am again asking for help from my 400+ LinkedIn connections. Some of you are coppers, some of you were, and  many of you will know someone in the Job. Please share – you don’t have to endorse it, just make your policing and investigation links aware of it so that they can assess it for themselves.

I wrote ‘Police Time Management’ for one simple reason – in 30 years of front-line policing I never received one formal hour of training in how to manage my time. Think on that. The busiest non-combat job in the world, paralleled by the NHS whose practitioners, I suspect, receive the same amount of TM training as I did. None. My former colleagues need this. Someone had to provide it. Here it is. In time for the New Years Resolutions they are going to set! And in time for the next policy change that will increase their workload just a little bit more.

So I’m seeking help from those policing colleagues that understand exactly where I’m coming from – you know you’re busy, you know your colleagues are busy, you wish you weren’t quite so busy, so help yourself and others find out how you can manage your work in the context of the time available, and of the people for whom, with whom and because of whom it is being done.

The focus is on a principle-based, systematic mental approach as much as it is on method. Think of it this way: Methods work in specific circumstances. Principles work in ALL circumstances. A systematic approach can adapt when circumstances change. I have taken the proven ‘science’ and applied it to the art and practices of policing so that the system can be adapted by individual police officers and staff to their specific working needs – but also so that they can apply it off duty.

It is an A4-sized, 300 page book – no lightweight – for just £12.99. Hopefully by now the ‘Look Inside’ facility can provide you with a clear indication of the content and style. Have a squint. Investigate!

Help me help you and those you care about.

Thank you.

Police Time Management: Productivity for Law Enforcement Professionals: Amazon.co.uk: Palmer (Retd), DC David: 9798572788204: Books