There is never enough time! Or not enough at the right time. Where does it all go?

Here are some facts and figures which may help to establish how much time there is to do things and stuff. And then it might be possible to work out how to use it most or least efficiently and effectively.

If you doze off during this story... well you just ran out of time... there will be more tomorrow.

Unfortunately, time is not a decimalised currency. Time is affected by the sun, by the moon and by religious and non-religious festivals. Time is a difficult thing to manage; it only goes one way but ticks along steadily.

All calendars began with people recording time by using natural cycles of light and dark (days), lunar passages (months) and solar cycles (seasons and years). The cycles were organised into calendars to keep track of time and to plan for future natural and man made events of importance to humans.

2008 is a time unit with its own characteristics and idiosyncrasies. Here are a few of them;

2008 is a leap year with a 366th day on Friday 29th February which equates to 1/366 or 0.27% extra - which is nice. Actually the year for earth to circumnavigate the sum is 365 days 5 hours and 46 seconds long or 365.24199 days. That is reasonably fixed but all the following are adjustable depending on the individual, their projects, their context, culture and circumstances. What are your calculations?

In 2008 there will be 262 "working week days" covering Monday to Friday or 71.6% of the total.

If we take out the bank holidays and Christmas week which impact on weekdays than this will reduce the "working days" to 252 or 68.9% of the total. In other countries, such as Spain and France, there are even more holidays.

The number of weeks in total in 2008 with a Saturday and Sunday is 52.

But the number of weeks with a full five working days is 45 or 86.5% of the total.

This means that there is a balance of 7 weeks with four or even less working days because of bank holidays - which probably are not even 4/5ths or 80% effective owing to knock on effects.

If the average person has time off from their working days (252 days in 3 above) of say 20 days holiday, say 5 days illness, say 3 days training then an "individuals working days" would be 224 days or 61% of the total days. This very much depends on the individual.

In 2008 Easter is "early" in late March with Good Friday on 21st and Easter Monday on 24th which will distort the impact of optimum durations and fixed term time at Universities, Colleges and Schools and thus everywhere else.

If the average person were to work eight hours on their 224 individual working days then they would have 1792 working hours available in 2008. Adjust for 7½ hours or other periods per day.

This would equate to 20.4% of the whole year of 366 days of 24 hours - which sounds a lot less but reflects time spent travelling, sleeping, eating, going out etc...

If this individual were to work an extra hour say four days per working week then this would add 208 extra hours to their annual output and change their percentage of the whole year up to 22.7% or an extra 11.2%. This is overtime or working over.

Alternatively if this individual were to work for 4 hours on every Saturday morning, or across the weekend, except when there was an adjacent bank holiday, then this would add a further 192 extra hours also to their annual output.

Because there are 52 weeks and only twelve months the average month is 4.33 weeks or 30.5 days.

Alternatively or at the same time eight months will have 4 weeks and four months will have five weeks. In 2008 the five week months based on Wednesdays are January, April, July, October and December.

As usual this would suggest that five week months should have 25% more weekly production or costs/cashflow than four week months - but this might not be true -particularly see December.

Bank Holidays in 2008 in England are Tuesday 1st January, Friday 21st and Monday 24th March, Monday 5th and Monday 26th May, Monday 25th August, Thursday 25th and Friday 26th December (plus say three other 'lost' December days) - and then off we go again. Scotland has its own variety as do most countries.

Other important dates are birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and Cup Finals - if you can afford them - although semi finals are frequently better contests. Fathers Day is on Sunday 15th June and Mothering Sunday is on 2nd February - and all the other days.

European summer time begins on Sunday 30th March and ends on Sunday 26th October.

Productivity and efficiency are related to production outputs against time allocations - 2008 will be no different in these aspects.

And so a conundrum for 2008! There is to be a meeting on the second Wednesday of every month which will review a report of the previous month. Owing to calendar influences for each month:

• what are the chances of the report being late or incomplete;
• what are the chances of the meeting attendees "not receiving it" or having not read it;
• and what are the chances or not all of the attendees turning up for the meeting or sending a substitute?

[Keep records, analyse as you go OR review 2007 records and memory and manage 2008 accordingly]

Have a good time.

Is that the time!

How time flies!