Nicholas Bate –

1. Every 45 minutes, take 5 minutes. Stretch, walk, sip water, look out of a window at the horizon and ask what’s really important at this moment?

2. Control what you can, which is a lot: your mood, choosing what’s really important not just urgent (see 1, above) and your dealings with people. Ignore that which you cannot change: give them zero time and energy. The weather, the crazy whims of Head Office Mother Ship and junk TV.

3. Regularly hide so you cannot be distracted by The Five Addictive Cs: caffeine, connections of the digital kind, confectionery & cookies, cubicle cynicism and cooler chit-chat.

4. Have a flight-deck: one place, one view, one perspective of what you need to focus on. This is not your in-box.

5. Slow down enough that you can recognise the tantalising seductive but perspective destroying, energy depleting and soul withering nature of the blisteringly urgent, but actually not at all important.

6. Say ‘no’ more. Say it constructively. Say it nicely. Say it helpfully. But say ‘no’ more.

7. Do a few things totally brilliantly every day. And feel very productive.