A reader laments, "No matter how conscious I am of saving time throughout the day, I still find myself Racing the clock. What, if anything, am I doing wrong?"

* Consider the following example: any one-hour activity that you undertake in the course of the day will consume one solid year out of the next 24 years of your life. One hour is to 24 hours as one year is to 24 years.

* With this realization, consider the cumulative effects of reading junk mail for only 30 minutes a day or spending 15 minutes a day in line at the bank – both of which could be avoided if you used mail, phone, or email services.

* Obviously there are some things that you couldn't or wouldn't want to give up and it is silly to apply this kind of arithmetic to activities such as personal hygiene.