Police Time Management

Focus – NOT Mindfulness – is what you want.

Something about myself about which I have become aware is an overly active ‘what’s next’ approach to living, and it’s driving me batty. In the excellent drama ‘West Wing, President Josiah Bartlett had a saying, which he repeatedly said during crisis meetings. They’d all be chatting away about a problem, then they’d solve it and Bartlett would say, “What’s next?” It was a declaration that said Decision Made and also Move Along.

That’s in my head all of the time. The impulse for this article was me realising, as I sat on the porcelain throne, that my head was buzzing with all the things I had to do today, the order in which to do them, what have I forgotten, where’s the gizmo I need, and so on. Not conducive to the job that was at hand which, although concentration was required, did not warrant haste. Haste may make waste, but in this case the waste had already been made. But enough of that vision…..

I find that whatever I am doing, I am thinking about the next thing. This means that my focus is not on enjoying the moment, but on the stress of not yet doing that ‘next thing’. Even as I write, my left hand hovers over a camcorder I need to charge for tomorrow’s appointment, which leads me to remember the other things I need to prepare, and when am I going to clean the car and

So on.

Mentally wearing.

Some might suggest the Mindfulness is the answer. I disagree. I disagree because (to my mind) mindfulness is abandonment from the moment, even though it’s supposed to be connection to the moment. To me, mindfulness implies separation from the ‘activity of the moment in preference for the ‘wholeness’ of that moment, and I don’t want to disassociate from what I am doing to seek a nirvana-like state of bliss. I’m too busy.

I DO want to focus only on what I am doing and allow the space in my head to be used just for that productive effort, at that particular moment.

Maybe there is a crossover between focus and mindfulness, but I’m too busy to find it.

Moving on….

Having a plan for the day in advance of that day, helps. Making a prioritised list means looking at the appointments and commitments you have for the day, and then reviewing the order so that you can be doing the appropriate thing at the appropriate time, or so that you can amend your priorities as interruptions and conflicts arise – as they inevitably do in this line of work.

I deal with that in detail in the book Police Time Management, but in a nutshell it means allocating an ‘Order of Events’ to the planned tasks – in and around and in anticipation of set appointments – so that you can fit in the important things that need to be done. Then, having set that order, focus on those things in that order in the knowledge that each will get the appropriate attention as and when you have planned to do it.

Your current practice of an A4 To-Do List contains all the things you want to do, and as a result you have no plan – just a head full of stuff written onto a bit of paper. That’s not a plan, that’s a mess.

My advice – learn how to prioritise and plan each day. Plan each day at the start of the week, and then adapt at the start of each day. That means that on Sunday (for example) you plan things you want to do every day that week, and then at the start of each day, you plan the order of events, and then execute accordingly.

It’s amazing how focused you can get if you have something to focus on. Other than birds singing and trees a-rustlin’.

You NEED Structure – to be Flexible.

“I don’t want to manage my time, I like to be spontaneous.”

An amusing falsehood I often heard during the time management input I provided to my colleagues when I had that opportunity. Now, in their defence, the people who routinely made that statement were office-based: I can’t say I ever recall those responsible for incident attendance EVER saying that! Imagine a uniformed patrol officer saying, “I don’t have enough opportunity to be spontaneous.”

Nevertheless, it is a feeling some people have that their working life (and personal life, given the crossover between the two in these modern times) is too restrictive and they feel that they want some time to be more in control of what they’re doing.

There is a balance to be had between two apparently conflicting types of working practice, I admit.

The two types of work pattern to which I refer are Structure, and Flexibility. A lot of my participants would have sworn that they worked completely under the one or the other ‘heading’, but the truth is that everyone works somewhere along the continuum between the two. Patrol officers are definitely at the ‘flexible’ end, withing the structure of shift work, briefings and pre-planned operations. Office-based staff tended to work towards the ‘structured’ end – turn up, deal with the in-box, go home – but detectives, control room staff and operational managers (e.g. Inspector ranks) were closer to the flexible side than data analysts (for example).

The real challenge is – to be effective, you can only be flexible within the structure that serves it?

It is the structure that serves your ability to be flexible, so that you don’t completely randomise your work and in doing so massively reduce productivity, and undermine the purpose, aims and objectives of the organisation for which you work.

Imagine turning up when you want, doing what you feel like doing, then going when you feel like it? Stupid? Well, yes, but that’s what total flexibility would cause to happen. But knowing what is expected of you, within the timescales that apply, means you can plan what you have to do – and be flexible around that plan. Both sides win. And the same goes for your personal life, although you can probably be a bit more spontaneous there. Providing you don’t forget your partner’s birthday…..

In my book Police Time Management I delve much deeper into the subject of flexibility and planning. Why not have a look at the ‘Look Inside’ facility and see if there is something that will serve your ability to do what you want to do at work, while still doing your duty?

It worked for me……………

Better Teams are made from Better People

The police service prides itself on how its staff works in high-performing teams, but my own experience suggests that these teams are often a loose set of professional individuals with conflicting priorities who are occasionally brought together in a different order to deal with whatever comes along. Mostly very competent professionals, but the teams are very ad-hoc.

Murder? Grab whoever is available regardless of experience, knowledge, specialism or location, this is important.

Of course it is, and of course you need to do that. But it’s Gareth Southgate like waiting for the final of the Euros and calling Ole Gunnar Solskjær (yes, I had to look it up) on the Saturday afternoon asking who’s available that is English. Not efficient, and its effectiveness is partly blamed on luck.

That situation was imposed on the service until they started establishing Major Incident Teams, but there is still that “un-abandon ship!” element to any incident.

To be blunt, the fact that we deal so well with this approach is a testament to how good we are, but the existence of MITs is also testament to how good/better we can be.

I confess I don’t have the answer, but I have a suggestion. Make sure everyone is good at the basics, and when you find someone who is exceptional at something, let them do that while teaching others, even if only by the traditional osmosis created by them working together for a bit.

When is say good at the basics, I mean really good. Making sure that statements are the best they can be, or training and monitoring those whose statements evidence excessive, lazy brevity and disorganised thinking. Establishing a successful interviewing method informed by PEACE and drawing circles, but where flair and ‘inquisitive initiative’ is applauded.

You see, I can’t help thinking that too much store is set on ticking procedural boxes and creating drones, and not as much as could be on rewarding, encouraging (and even forgiving) initiative and creativity within the legal and practical boundaries of police work. Not to mention artificial bars to doing a good job, like removing PNC access from front-line staff, thus increasing the workload for the Control Room and delaying criminal investigations when the one with access isn’t there.

As to your own responsibility as a team member, it is to be the most supportive and well-informed person you can be in respect of what you do, which in turn creates an obligation to research and explore what you do, at a deeper level than your training permitted when you got it. I know I became good in a particular area (tracing and arresting wanted people) and went on to be a source of learning (and a paid author/trainer😉) as a result. Which saved other people time, improved results for the team, and stopped all this ‘why has it taken so long to come to court’ cr4p we read about in the press, these days.

And forgive the ‘banging on a bit’ bit, but learning how to manage your workload can be a major support for your efforts to become a better employee, manager or leader than you already are.

If you want to get better at something specialist, find, buy and study the book, training and other people that have the knowledge required. That last bit is actually called Modelling and is a great way to learn as long as it isn’t the only way, and the person teaching it is someone trustworthy!

I recall a few people who had to overcome the training their tutors provided……

If you all try to be the BEST one in a team, you will all benefit.

Don’t Get Comfortable….

One of the things I find most interesting about reading personal development books is the discovery of common themes with different terminologies. I sometimes wonder who invented the concept being explained, and who pinched it. I’d read something in a book and think how clever the author was, and then attend a seminar where a different speaker made the same presentation using different metaphors. And I’d think, “He nicked that off X!” before realising I didn’t really know who thought of it first -I’d just discovered the idea in that order. So I became more forgiving, and now I just explore the concepts more academically.

For example: two writers I respect wrote about how as individuals we tend to spend our time in our Comfort Zones, avoiding the strange and unexpected, and as a result we limit our personal growth. They identified how people go to exotic places on holiday and, on arrival, check the TV channels to ensure that what they get at home, they get there. We go to restaurants and order the same food. We watch a film several times. This ‘comfort zone’ mentality is comfortable as it means there are no threats, but it also means we don’t try things we otherwise might and – from a work perspective – we also avoid and even fight against doing work with which we are unfamiliar.

Anyway, these two writers wrote about Comfort Zones while another wrote about Circles of Concern (CofC) and Circles of Influence (CofI). Reading about that again the other day (in my comfort zone) I wondered if the Circle of Influence concept matched the Comfort Zone concept. The CofI is our area of experience where we have control over what is happening around us, whereas the CofC contains everything that we know about, but can’t do anything about. For example, the CofC contains the traffic jam, but the CofI contains our willingness or otherwise to accept it, seek and alternative route, or get really angry.

In both cases, the route to ‘better’ requires expansion: both require personal growth effort to make the zones bigger.

You need to expand your comfort zone if you are ever to improve professionally or personally, and you need to expand your Circle of Influence for the same reason. And the key to expanding either lies in pushing yourself just a little more than you otherwise might.

Which makes me think that both concepts are, as implied in the opening paragraphs, the same thing using different terminology. Realising that makes me feel clever. Doing something about it, even more so.

Next time you are offered an opportunity to leave your comfort zone, think of it less as an inconvenience and more as a chance to learn something new.

Hand on heart – I discovered that too late in my career to not think of it as the inconvenience.

But over time I did notice how those who get ahead are very often those who, consciously or otherwise, seemed willing to go the extra, uncomfortable mile. They learned, they developed. If I avoided such chances – I did not. And that is the advice I provide you, and which I will be providing my grandchildren – to grow, you have to stretch. And while stretching can sometimes be uncomfortable, it creates flexibility in thinking and creativity.

Having said that, the Detective Chief Inspector who said she was ‘delighted’ to be co-ordinating dog thefts at a national level during the Covid crisis was lying. Some stretches just ain’t worth it.

You lie because you’re busy. But you’re busy because you lie.

One of the biggest time-wasters I have ever experienced in policing – and as I write this I feel a compunction to confess that I have done it myself – is telling lies. Not perjury-type lies, though. The little white ones.

The one where you tell the victim of a crime that something can’t or won’t be done because of some excuse that comes to you in the moment. Ones like, “A house-to-house never turns up anything’; ‘the criminals won’t use local pawn shops, they’re not that stupid’; ‘it’s your word against theirs so the CPS won’t prosecute’; and one I experienced, which was more of an excuse than a lie, ‘I’ve spoken to the CPS and they say there is insufficient evidence’ when I know that they hadn’t even interviewed the named suspect.

All of those comments have one objective – to avoid work. Now, I’m not overly blaming people; the reason they want to avoid work is because they feel that the work they do have is more than enough to be going on with, without another hour or so to be taken on a task that experience suggests won’t have a tangible result.

You see, when the CPS keeps telling you that what you think is a stonewaller guilty verdict ‘has evidential problems’ – i.e., their title for ‘I’m too frightened to try and litigate this, I only do guilty pleas’ – then you, too, eventually start thinking that what you need to do will be a waste of time.

I’m partly convinced that this is why the new Chief Constable of the GMP has declared that all burglaries will be attended to – for too long, the poor detection rate has resulted in our doing less work rather than trying harder to detect crime. The feeling is that if the detection rate is only 30%, then we should only attend 30% of those crimes and weed out the others. Which means probably missing out, by definition, of another 30%’s worth of crimes that could have been detected if we’d gone to them.

(Weird how a 1908s unethical personal policy eventually became a 21^st century force policy, eh?)

I stand by this sentence: If you can manage your time effectively and efficiently, you can do all the work that is required of you. Too many people put things off so consistently that they’ve forgotten that doing it takes less time than putting it off. The corollary, however, is that if you/the organisation do not learn time management in a systematic fashion, then you will never learn how to maximise productivity while reducing stress.

Dear senior officers: the service you provide to the public, like any corporate, client-focused business, requires that you invest in teaching your employees how best to serve your customers, and that training must include the basics of time management, whereby people learn appropriate time usage in order to put the appropriate amount of effort into the appropriate things in the appropriate way and at the appropriate moment.

The NCALT package isn’t enough. People need to learn a system the same way they learn custody processes – learning it, seeing it, experiencing it.

Invest some money in teaching your people to manage their time so that they can provide the service you want to provide with improved consistency.

Or the same problems will keep arising – incomplete, poor-quality work and the associated results. Having to do things again, and again, and again……

Like investigating burglaries committed by people you could’ve already caught, if you hadn’t been too busy to do the basics.

Blunt, I know. But you also know – it’s true.

For a police-oriented guide to time management in the policing sector, buy Police Time Management by David Palmer, £12.999 through Amazon.

Time Mismanagement – Involuntary?

You’re busy, right? But how much of it is your own fault?

You may think that your workload is entirely influenced by circumstance, and therefore take the view that the level of tasks you are stuck with are entirely out of your control. You may recall, from your rookie years, the old ‘self-generated work’ approach that probationers (in particular) are encouraged to apply, which tended to open you up to a little bit of self-inflicted busy-ness. Those of you who, like me, couldn’t ‘not’ deal with stuff that occurred in front of you, still influence your workloads. As a result, when you can, you step away from ‘accidentally’ discovering new work so that you can catch up. Personally, I consider that a valuable coping technique and provided it isn’t an excuse for work avoidance, then carry on, I say.

That’s work sorted. But how much of your personal life busy-ness is your fault? Your first response may be to ask what am I on – “I’m completely in control of my personal life,” you may think. To be frank, you are responsible for how busy you are, but here’s a little input on why you may not be quite as in control as you thought you were.

In his book The Harried Leisure Class, author Staffan B. Linder made an astute observation when (and I paraphrase) he suggested that everything we decide has a time impact. For example, you buy a book – and immediately you have decided that while you read that, you won’t be able to use the time for anything else. A simple ‘duh’ example, yes?

Okay. Let’s up the ante. You buy a house. Now you have a responsibility to maintain it. But – did you need that huge garden? Did you need 5 bedrooms? Did you need three en-suites? All of the decisions you make – or decisions you just defaulted – have a time impact. And not just once, but monthly or more often. Less obvious examples: you have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkledIn, TikTok (why??), Snapchat et al. You subscribe to Sky, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, NowTV and a myriad of other media channels. And in doing these things you unconsciously allocate time to maintaining your control and use of them – or rather, their control and use of you.

I confess, I have Prime, Netflix and Disney+ (or my son does 😊) and I have found that despite all the options available to me, I spend time exploring them all only to find nothing worth watching. But I’m sure there must be an element of FOMO (fear of missing out) because I still have to look, don’t I? Well, no. But like you, I do.

But only when I’m not doing something more important.

Back to my original point. When assessing how you are going to use your time in the future, one of your considerations needs to be – “When I buy/get this ‘thing’, how much maintenance effort will it cost in terms of time and resources I could spend elsewhere and on more important things?”

Personally, I suggest you adapt the Time Matrix, which I cover here and in my book Police Time Management, and consider whether the commitment you’re about to make is Important or just a Vanity project. Big house? How about one ‘just’ big enough and you spend the money/time benefit on family holidays and events? New car? How about one a few years older and spend the savings (and depreciation costs) on your hobbies? Big garden? How about you gravel it and save years of lawn mowing? (Okay, maybe only in part because green is nice, but a big garden needs a committed gardener. And lots and lots of time.)

I am personally very conscious of how much stuff I possess and how much the financial commitment I made in buying them influences any attempt to sell or replace them. I call them my ‘collection’ because it soothes my conscience, but the space they take up both physically and mentally sometimes make me wish I’d learned about minimalism a long time ago.

In conclusion, remember that when you make a choice about how you use your time, you simultaneously make a decision – usually an unconscious one – about how you won’t be using it, as well.

Think about that.

Dealing With The Dreaded CPS Memorandum….

Ah, the dreaded CPS memo. Often a long list of truly amorphous blobs of undoability (a term I have stolen, I confess). You’re busy, this document arrives in your in-tray and you immediately enter the depths of despair. You read it, and the following thoughts go through your head:

I don’t have time.
They don’t need that.
What is that all about?
How long will that take?
I don’t have time.

Unfortunately, the one thing the CPS will say when you decline their kind request for you to do this extra work is – if you don’t, we won’t prosecute. It’s their ultimate sanction, the one they should use last, and the most childish one. But it remains a possibility that the work you’ve done so far, for your victims, will be wasted because the CPS are the only solicitors who tell their clients what to do, rather than just advise them. So having accepted that you’re stuck with it, what to do?

First of all, consider tis memo to be nothing more than a ToDo List. You can use this memo as a proxy To Do List but If you want, you can transfer all the items to your own Activity Checklist or To Do List document. It seems daft, but psychologically, taking ‘their’ memo and listing the contents on ‘your’ form means you take control of the work. It seems odd, but it is true – the CPS list is now your list. Having done that, what next? You may be surprised, but the answer might be to make the list longer. (WHAT!!??) Let me explain.

In my book, Police Time Management, I state that there are really only 4 kinds of ‘things’ to do. Tasks, Appointments, Notes and Contacts. All of the demands will come under one or more of those headings, but will only require one act at a time. Let me illustrate.

Any demand that is entirely within your power to complete is probably a Task. You can do it without help, resources, etc. Such a CPS request will be a one-liner – ‘Get me this…’. Maybe it’s just a question, or you need to copy something in your possession. Easy.

But other requests may be a paragraph long. Such items will routinely require input from others, so the first action you need to plan is – to make Contact. Plan that contact, make it where possible (i.e. if it can be done straight way), then plan the next action required. If you need to visit someone, make the appointment – through initial contact or directly if possible. In this scenario, Notes will initially be documents already in your possession, and later they’ll be the documents you amass in carrying out the required actions.

Having decided what items actually are (TANC), another assessment you need to make will be – how long do I have? This focuses your mind and allows you to assess which items on your TANC list are urgent, if any. Urgent ones need to be given a deadline, but you know how they work. The ultimate deadline (‘reply by’ date) provides the time frame within which you can decide what-to-do-when.

Having considered the demands as TANC-identified things to do, your list may be longer, but now it is manageable and actionable. Each action on your plan requires one, simple act. Copy something, call someone, get something, complete a form and wait. And so on. Instead of detailed, long-winded and complicated demands on the original memo, your own version will be:

Contact CSI re statement from Jones
Complete MGFSS re additional items
Obtain authorisation for FSS work
Arrange movement of exhibits as per policy
Call Fred re statement appointment
Take Fred statement
Print Google Map of crime location/roue of travel of suspect
Draft suspect movements on printout
Finalise and submit as exhibit
Research legal argument why request is unnecessary 😊
Etc

All single, actionable tasks, completion of which will meet the CPS demands within the timescale because you planned them, rather than just read and hated them.

This example is very much off the top of my head and therefore exceptionally simple, but take a look at your last memo from the CPS and see if you could have made it easier to complete by converting it from lawyer-speak to a TANC-related list of singular tasks. And ask yourself, “If I did this, would I have been less stressed?”

And then do that for all your work.

For an in-depth explanation and demonstration of the TANC idea, get the book Police Time Management, only £12.99 from Amazon for 300+ pages of help!

Are you a Morning Person?

I’ve often opined that all those Californian, rich(ish) personal development speakers and writers and their ‘Rise at 5AM and exercise’ freaks should come and live where I do in South Wales, where it’s easier to pick up the dog eggs in the garden at 6AM because they’re rock hard with ice. Where the idea of a home gym is fine if you live with a spare room big enough for a running machine or static bike, said room being centrally heated to at least ‘bearable’ for that early effort. And where going to bed early so as to get a decent kip before getting up at 5AM isn’t easy because the road and neighbours aren’t 100 yards away and are living their noisy lives while you try to drop off. And fitness clubs remain an expensive luxury.

Which is not to say that exercising is impossible.

I have a spin bike, a relatively inexpensive yet reliable (4 years so far) model. I have a mount (thank you Santa) for a 7” tablet through which I watch YouTube videos which inform, entertain or anger depending on the day’s choice. And a garden shed to put it in. There simply is no room in the main dwelling. You see, I am not a financial success like all those 5AM loonies. I am a moderate professional success on that I have always been employed doing work I enjoy, on the public purse in their service. So none of that ‘earn twice as much, work half as hard’ twaddle that Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield promote – which is valid for the entrepreneur or commission-paid individual but not public servants like us. If I wanted to earn twice as much as a copper I’d have had to work 76 hour weeks AND ask permission, first.

Each of us lives in his or her own circumstances, which do not necessarily reflect those described by such writers. Some do. Lucky them.

Back to me.

What gets me out of bed at 7.30AM, or more specifically onto the bike at 7.40AM, is self-discipline and a desire to not get fat again. I don’t want to ride a bike first thing, but it would be rude of a promoter of such a concept not to try. So that’s what gets me up. My Integrity. Doing the things I don’t like to do because (a) they serve me and (b) I said I would. If only to myself.

I should also be up front and state that it doesn’t work every day. If I don’t sleep well I’d make the next day worse, not better, if I self-flagellated with exercise before starting work. (I can always exercise afterwards, if I feel up to it.) But here, the point isn’t to apply self-discipline to the point of self-punishment. That’s a route to failure.

But I will also add that doing that exercise first, and educating myself while I do so, sets me up for the day. And you may have noticed that many of your successful colleagues do, as well.

I get up. I go out into the cold shed and exercise.

I win. The rest of the day is a breeze.

So much so, this took 15 minutes to write. In the flow. And with integrity – nothing I write is a lie to myself or to my reader. Whoever you are.

Be disciplined. But be disciplined early.

To Err Is Human: To Admit It, Divine.

I like to promote the concept of Teaching to Learn, first made known to me in reading books by management and leadership expert Stephen R. Covey. Its basis lies in the belief that the best way to encourage a student to take in what is being taught, is to oblige the student to pass on what is learned. If you’re duty bound to pass on an important message you’ll concentrate on that message. For my part I have been doing that for 20 years, in respect of the content of Covey’s books, particularly in schools.

I have committed to doing that for my next seven posts, so here is todays’ lesson as it pertains to time and self-management in the policing world.

A core approach to self-management is the concept of personal responsibility. You may assume you already possess this trait, but research and philosophy in this area suggests that we could all apply it at a deeper level. By ‘personal responsibility’ we don’t just mean admitting mistakes – we mean for everything.

That means never blaming circumstances for problems, but seeking instead to accept they exist and to focus, deliberately, on the solutions. It means identifying what we want to do, where we want to go, even who we are – and making every effort to ‘make it so’. It also means acknowledging that it is our own fault if we fail – or perhaps, put better, our own responsibility. We can accept blame when it is ours to claim, but we can also look at situations caused by ‘them out there’ and consider how much of the negative outcome was simply down to us.

For example, I fell foul of an employment situation and admittedly felt like lashing out, but I had to acknowledge I played my own part – in some ways I failed personally, in others I failed to act on a nagging feeling I had that, shall we say, empowered and enabled that personal failing.

Taking 100% Responsibility is hard, because it recognises that fault will lie with us, but at the same time it is empowering because it almost forces us to plan ahead, to consider the options and consequences, and to plan towards the better outcome. It also, if you can take it to the fullest extent, overcomes the negativity and debilitation caused by the tendency to apportion blame and focus on revenge (even if only considered as a theory….). In other words – taking responsibility helps because it stops you getting angry.

So next time a boss has a go – accept your part and let him/her keep all the negative emotion. I used to wonder why bosses got angry when I was the one in trouble. I’d be the one being punished and truly inconvenienced. They just had to do the paperwork. But if I was in the wrong I’d look inside myself, accept what (if anything) I had caused, address it and move on. Literally, in the one case.

And all the emotional energy NOT used in blaming can be used to prepare for what is to come, to live and work towards what you want out of this job, and to provide your stakeholders with the service they deserve.

Next time you feel a negative emotion – and you will – stop for a moment and think, “What is MY part in this situation and how can I make it better?” , instead of wasting valuable time revisiting and rationalising someone else’s responsibility. Let them do that.

You’re busy moving on and going places.

On the 26^th of March 1993, I learned a valuable lesson about punctuality. Viv Martella, a DC at Sun Hill, missed a briefing. Later that day, she approached a van to ask it to move out of the way, and got shot by the wobbers sat inside – the target of the op that was the subject of the briefing. DI Burnside was not sympathetic.

We shouldn’t get our training from the media as a rule, but this one is, for reasons I can’t fathom, quite memorable. I haven’t watched The Bill for decades. But if she’d been punctual, she’d still be alive.

Punctuality. We work(ed) in a disciplined service. Yet more and more I saw tardiness excused by supervisors who wanted to be ‘nice’ rather than ‘supervisory’. Of course, occasional lateness can be caused by genuine circumstance – the motorway along which so many of my colleagues travel is prone to traffic-jam causing RTCs. But the colleague whose specific 10-minutes lateness every day had a time named after him – “Dodge-past-9”. Every day, without fail – exactly 10 minutes late.

“It’s no big deal,” you suggest. Merely 10 minutes. Ten minutes after the target passes the stinger? Ten minutes after the Judge cites you for contempt? Ten minutes after the details of the blagger’s van is circulated? Ask Viv.

Jack Canfield, author of ‘The Success Principles’ learned early on from his mentors that ‘If you’re not early, you’re late’. I take that view. Experience tells me that if/when I am early, I get the best seats, the shortest queue, the fastest getaway, the greater opportunities. And what I don’t get is stressed, disciplined, or the last pie.

Sometimes I overdo it, but I plan it that way. This morning I’m leaving for a race circuit so that I can arrive at least 90 minutes before I can play on it. I avoid traffic jams and I allow time to be properly prepared both vehicularly* and mentally. And I get to watch other petrolheads make mistakes from which I can learn.

But perhaps above all, being punctual is a demonstration of respect for those involved, who have an interest in your being on time. When someone is late for you, how do you feel? Let down? Inconvenienced? Angry? And if a loved one is late, do you worry?

If you are going to be late, call and explain why. Tell the truth.

But ideally, plan your life so that you are early.

Be like Jack.

Not Viv. Viv was late, and now she’s late. Permanently.

*Is a word.