If I said, “Send it” every time a publicist offered me a book, this column could be nothing but reviews.

You don’t want that and neither do I, so I accept these offers only occasionally. When I do, the book needs to have really good “get outs” - clear and simple health and fitness strategies that could benefit you and are easy to use.

The book you’re about to read about does and has something even better: “get backs.” In her latest book, The 1-Day Refund: Take Back Time, Spend It Wisely (Wiley, 2022), Donna McGeorge demonstrates ways to reclaim some of what we never seem to have enough of.

Time.

Because we’ve come to associate being busy with being productive, having importance, and “winning” the game called life, too many of us live our lives exhausted, overwhelmed, and sacrifice quality of life in the process, McGeorge explains. These false notions create much malaise - and many “busy addicts.”

To exemplify both, McGeorge begins the third book in her It’s About Time series with a story about a friend who manages to remain above all that.

The friend is pulled aside by her boss who tells her a fact she already knows: Her coworkers work longer hours. But that fact creates a falsehood held by both her boss and coworkers.

That she doesn’t have enough to do.

When she specifically asks how her work has missed the mark, her boss backs off. He says it hasn’t, that it’s fine, and that, in fact, he always gets great feedback from others about it.

But once again, he expresses the busy addict’s point of view. “It’s just that others seem to work longer hours.”

To explain what’s at work here (the terrible pun is totally intended), McGeorge shares what Matthew Bidwell of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School says so many managers are guilty of. “When they can’t measure outputs easily, they will measure inputs, such as how long [employees] are spending at work.”

Now let’s be clear about the link to this line of thinking and your health.

Regardless of the job you hold (or don’t because you’re retired or unemployed), you’re a manager, too, of both your professional and personal time. If you’re also a busy addict, your mental or physical health - and maybe even both - invariably suffer.

So I need to ask: Do you make that same mistake many life managers make and confuse input with output?

If so, you gotta read this book.

McGeorge believes if you do and follow all of her strategies, you can save a full day’s worth of time every week; hence, the book’s catchy title, The 1-Day Refund: Take Back Time and Spend It Wisely.

But I’d never expect - or want - you to ever follow every single suggested strategy in any sort of book.

In the same way I tell you never to accept my eating and exercise advice lock, stock, and barrel, but to experiment using some of it based on your goals and abilities, I advise the same here. As clever as the title may be, it’s probably hyperbole - but why should you care?

If you pick out and do a thing or two McGeorge suggests and save even 30 minutes a day ... Wouldn’t that be an absolute godsend?

One of McGeorge’s suggestions that strikes me as easy to follow and really sensible is to stop project jumping and multitasking.

It’s not that you can’t listen to the television while you read the newspaper and make sure your easily distracted son is doing his homework; it’s that none of the activities receive your full attention. So you create three compromised experiences instead of a single full one.

It’s a compromise that’s been studied in depth in workplace situations, and McGeorge shares the results.

On-the-job multitasking reduces productivity 40 percent “across the board” and increases the time it takes to finish a job by 50 percent. And if you thought dope smokers were slow on the take after indulging, consider this: “Heavy multitasking can even temporarily lower IQ up to 15 points.” (But at least you don’t get the munchies.)

Yet that’s not to say taking a break from a task at hand has no benefit.

Knowing how and when to do so, McGeorge argues, can save time in the long run. After mentioning that over 3000 medical studies have found a work break that incorporates traditional meditation has a “positive impact,” she acknowledges that even “the simple act of sitting and relaxing can be enough to quiet [her] brain, helping to catalogue thoughts, information, or ideas.”

Moreover, any “deliberate, purposeful activity” can increase productivity - and ultimately save time- by providing a mental break, too. I can vouch for this, having learned it the hard way years ago as young writer, which is just one of the reasons why I endorse this book now available through Amazon.com.

You can read it quickly - it’s only about 100 pages if you discount the graphics - and soon be saving time.