Twenty four hours a day minus eight hours we sleep leaves us with 16 productive hours to accomplish things that need to be done at home and at work. Of these 16 hours, a lot of time is wasted due to distractions, interruptions and disorganization. We just don't manage our time well.

THE TOP SIX TIME WASTERS

1. Television: We average four hours a day watching television. If we live to be 72 it works out to 12 solid years wasted watching TV. This doesn't include time spent on internet. SOLUTION? Go on frequent television fasts.

2. Emailing back and forth: Email becomes time consuming when you consider how often we check it and how frequently we are involved in sending back and forth messages. A survey was done by American Management Association with these results: Of 400 business managers polled.....35% use email to communicate with clients...26% prefer phone...15% would rather have face to face meetings. Interesting results when you consider time email consumes.

3. Junk mail of traditional kind. Too much time is wasted opening and then trashing unwanted mail.

These Fausts roughly belong to four tribes:

The Shoppers

These are shabby operators of marginal shadows of world of finance. They broker financial deals with meretricious sweat only to be rewarded their meagre, humiliated fees. Most of their deals do not materialize. The principle is very simple:

They approach a bank, a financial institution, or a borrower and say: "We are connected to banks or financial institutions in West. We can bring you money in form of credits. But to do that - you must first express interest in getting this money. You must furnish us with a bank guarantee / promissory note / letter of intent that indicates that you desire credit and that you are willing to provide a liquid financial instrument to back it up.". Having obtained such instruments, shoppers begin to "shop around". They approach banks and financial institutions (usually, in West). This time, they reverse their text: "We have an excellent client, a good borrower. Are you willing to lend to it?" An informal process of tendering ensues. Sometimes it ends in a transaction and shopper collects a small commission (between one quarter of a percentage point and two percentage points - depending on amount). Mostly it doesn't -and Flying Dutchman resumes his wanderings looking for more venal gulosity and less legal probity.

The Con-Men

These are crooks who set up elaborate schemes ("sting operations") to extract money from unsuspecting people and financial institutions. They establish "front" or "phantom" firms and offices throughout world. They tempt gullible by offering them enormous, immediate, tax-free, effort-free, profits. They let victims profit in first round or two of scam. Then, they sting: victims invest money and it evaporates together with dishonest operators. The "offices" are deserted, fake identities, forged bank references, falsified guarantees are all exposed (often with help of an inside informant).

Probably most famous and enduring scam is "Nigerian-type Connection". Letters - allegedly composed by very influential and highly placed officials - are sent out to unsuspecting businessmen. The latter are asked to make their bank accounts available to former, who profess to need third party bank accounts through which to funnel sweet fruits of corruption. The account owners are promised huge financial rewards if they collaborate and if they bear some minor-by-comparison upfront costs. The con-men pocket these "expenses" and vanish. Sometimes, they even empty accounts of their entire balance as they evaporate.

The Launderers

A lot of cash goes undeclared to tax authorities in countries in transition. The informal economy (the daughter of both criminal and legitimate parents) comprises between 15% (Slovenia) and 50% (Russia, Macedonia) of official one. Some say these figures are a deliberate and ferocious understatement. These are mind boggling amounts, which circulate between financial centres and off shore havens in world: Cyprus, Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein (Vaduz), Panama and dozens of aspiring laundrettes.