I'm pretty busy at the moment. I have to be careful with my time because I don't have that much spare right now.

So I keep quite tight control over my diary.

If you want to meet with me, I'll probably send you a link to my diary, and you can choose a date and time that suits you. But, of course, I have control over which times are available in the first place (simple things like you can't schedule two meetings within an hour of each other).

So the other day, I sent someone this link and he replied saying he would like to meet up next Thursday - and he would choose a time and book it using the link. To be honest, I forgot about it, expecting him to book the time and I could prepare for it later.

Then suddenly, on Thursday, he rings me up, saying "I'll be at your place in an hour". Luckily, I hadn't scheduled a meeting with anyone else at that time.

And then he arrives 45 minutes early, throwing off what I was doing anyway.

I don't say this to moan (although it was annoying). It's just that, when other people have a way of doing things, there's probably a reason for it. It may not be great, but there is a root cause.

So if you just barge in and disrupt it, you're doing yourself no favours at all.

Take action: How closely do you pay attention to how others are controlling their time?