The UK Learning and Skills Council had surveyed 1600 adults and over half identified that they were wasting two to three hours a day on certain activities including "waiting for children, partners or colleagues, queuing, gossiping, being stuck in traffic jams, or shopping".

My first question would be whether many of these activities are actually "wasting" time. Creating communities are all about supporting others. If a community or family is going to work then someone has to be the one who listens when people are in need, supporting those who maybe don't see the impact of their actions until afterwards and who ensures that the fridge and food cupboard are full of food, laundry is done etc etc. The problem is that the people interviewed did not see the "value" of those activities rather they deemed them wasting time. Rodin said that "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely".

I too get stuck in traffic jams spend time waiting for children to finish their sporting activities, get stuck driving from one place to another but these are some of the things that I do to make effective use of time:

1) Identify the top 20 things I need to do today and put all the others on a back-burner - priorities may change during the day but I don't allow others to set my priorities for me.

2) Answer emails in my own time - don't make emails decide the day for me. I always try to recognise if someone has tried to off-load one of their responsibilities by pressing the send button.

3)Identify the work that I can take with me (lessons learned from doing a PhD - I always had an academic paper with me - work that I had to edit and did five minutes here and five minutes there. The paper got rather moth-eaten by the end of the week, but page by page I got through the work I had to do).

4) If you are in a traffic jam - get off the road - get a coffee and do some work that you have brought with you or have an hour for yourself . When you get back on the road the traffic is better and you may still get home at the same time.

5) Put some podcasts on a CD and keep it in the car; or an audio book. If you get stuck in traffic then pop in the CD - you will learn something and not feel that the time has been completely lost.

6) Don't feel you have failed if you haven't completed all your tasks in one day ... for most tasks it doesn't really matter. You will know the ones where it does.

Is spending time in the car talking to your children about their day really a waste of time?

Is sourcing nutritious food for your children really a waste of time?

Is sharing a problem with a colleague or partner so that they can solve it - really a waste of time?

Time is about perspective after all H. Jackson Brown said "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein".