Meditate for five to ten minutes, early in the morning, every day. It will change your life.

I'm often asked about what the best way is to deal with conflict - conflict at work, conflict at home. Things only end up in conflict if they are let slip to that extent. You deal with conflict before conflict happens - just like you let a person who is behaving inappropriately know about it before they think that they can get away with behaving outrageously.

Normal crazy people - most of us - don't deserve and inch. Given an inch, we will take the proverbial mile and, then, there's always hell to pay.

Stop people in their tracks. For some bizarre politically correct reason, we'vve all become to nice - or, perhaps more to the point, we've all become to scared to say what needs to be said. If you don't say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, then, any difficulties you find yourself in thereafter are your own fault - not the fault of the normal crazy person who knows no better.

We all know the comfort that we take from doing the urgent things, from running around life blue-assed flies convincing ourselves that we're busy. It's good, it shows others how important we are, it makes us feel important. Quantity instead of quality.

What are the really important things in your life? And how much of your energy is devoted ot them? Consider the question: I didn't ask how much time - quality instead of quantity! But, horror of horrors, what if you could get all your important work done in two hours each day? What would other people think of you? To hell with other people, they don't really care about you, they're worried about what you think about them. So, actually, they're in hell already!

But, seriously, what if you could get all your important stuff done in a couple of hours? Chances are, if you were focused, you could. And, what then? Well, surely there are even more important things that you really, really want to do - the kind of things that my clients tell me that they long for - but that they simply don't have the time: the demands of the job, the demands of others (very often people who simply don't give a damn), the expectations of 'the system'... whatever that actually means.

Pull yourself together. Stop wasting your energy. Stop tossing away your time doing things that you shouldn't be doing but that make you feel as if you've lots to do. Stop it. Grow up. Start focusing.

Focus is a wonderful thing. You can see the wood for the trees. You can discern what needs to be done - at just the right moment and in just the righ way. And, if you're concerned that others will be put out by your apparent lack of conformity, let them judge you by your results... because, whilst an unfocused person as precious little to show for it, you, as a focused person, will have it in abundance.