One reason might be that you don't realise that you should be doing more than you realise, or another is that you aren't trusted to do anything or maybe simply your job isn't important. The long term result is the same in all cases - you aren't going to have that job for much longer. So what's the answer?

The reason being there are so many demands on us, so many hints to do, so many possibilities to follow, so many requests or orders to follow, we cannot possibly do everything.

The amount of things to do expands infinitely and is possibly even increased when we are good at our job because more possibilities open up as someone develops a reputation for making things happen.

So here's a radical idea; if you have genuinely finished everything every day, you are in trouble. Why?

This is going to sound simple, banal, obvious - but believe me in the people I work with as coach and the people I report to, the people who report to me and my colleagues (i.e everyone!) the answer is as simple as this: since you can't do everything, make sure that the stuff you do do is the important stuff.

So all you need to do is (a) know what the important stuff is (b) do the important stuff (c) only do the unimportant stuff when the important stuff is done.

So, there you have it. I can almost sense the cynicism - A business school lecturer thinks that management is easy. Someone who clearly doesn't know your boss/customers/colleagues.

And I hear these criticisms and I definitely wrestle with these every day - I am constantly tempted by interesting or easy stuff which takes me away from the duller but more important stuff.

So the trick is to really understand what is important, what it is YOU want to achieve and what the organisation values you doing.

Set objectives in order to achieve these. Then don't be distracted, out off course or bullied away from what you have decided.

How do you do this? I'll start on this next week! And it may take several weeks to work through it.

Unless something more important crops up of of course!