Schedule time to do nothing. Often.

Our world is too busy.

This busyness has created a population where stress-related heart disease and cancer is at an all time high.

Get off the treadmill. Make the effort to schedule at least a few minutes a day where you can do absolutely nothing.

At first you’ll feel guilty doing nothing (which shows you how sick our society has become). But after a while your mind and body will really look forward to these peaceful times, and when you eventually return into the hustle and bustle of the world, you’ll do so refreshed and renewed.

Hire slow, sack fast

Most executives do the opposite. They choose their staff quickly, without checking references, having multiple interviews, or evaluating all possible candidates. Then when they discover they’ve hired a dud, they don’t have the heart to get rid of them.

Successful executives never rush into hiring staff. But if they do have a poor performer, they give them some coaching, some warnings, then if they’re still mediocre they ditch them pronto.

The health of the overall company is just too important to let mediocre minds bring it down.

And don’t feel too bad about the ones you let go. If they’re any good, the sacking will be just the wake-up call they need to lift their game and get back onto the road to success.

Delegate everything possible

Most people spend far too much of their day doing unimportant things.

Delegate the laundry! Delegate the car washing! Delegate the house cleaning! Then spend the hours you save doing things that will really enrich your career and your home life.

Most people think they can’t afford to get hired help for these irksome tasks. But as the renowned high performance expert, Dr Frederick Grosse, pointed out, with all the time you’d save you could make a heck of a lot more money.”

Think about it. It makes tremendous sense.

Don’t work Hard, work carefully

Hard work does not make you rich. The world is full of people who work 70 hours a week and still aren’t wealthy.

The big money comes when you work carefully, only spending time doing things that actually increase your company’s income, instead of wasting hours every day chatting, eating, on the phone or in meetings. Most people work less than 15 income-producing hours a week.

Do all trivial administration at the end of the week

If your life is like mine, you probably get numerous phone calls and a mountain of mail every day.  If you respond to that as soon as you get it, then you’re just letting other people run your life.

If it’s not important, leave it till Friday afternoon at 5 o’clock, then handle it all in one hour.  That way your week will have a lot fewer trivial interruptions and you’ll end up having achieved a lot more.

Steal ideas from other industries and areas

The invention of Liquid Paper@ made a huge impact in offices in the 1970s. But its concept of ‘whiting out’ mistakes is what the painting industry had been doing for centuries.

The creation of Velcro™ revolutionised the clothing industry practically overnight. But its inventor says he got the idea from noticing how burrs from plants stuck to his legs as he walked by.

Many of the most brilliant breakthroughs in industry occur when there is a cross-fertilisation of concepts from two different areas.

When looking to advance your business, don’t just look at the competitors. Look at many fields and ask yourself, ‘Would these concepts work in our industry?’

Look for industries which might converge with yours

Just like at the cellular level, were sub-atomic particles in our body are ceaselessly joining together then splitting apart, so too in business there is widespread convergence.

Petrol stations are merging with general stores. Computers will soon merge with televisions inside your home. Sport has already merged with fashion.

Is your industry in the process of convergence? If it is and you can be among the first to see it and act upon it, then a great fortune awaits.

Become friends with the boss’s secretary

Most people suck up to the boss. A better tactic is to make a sincere effort to become friends with the boss’s secretary.

Senior ranking secretaries usually have a hell of a lot of power. And knowledge. Befriend them, and they’ll often let you in on some of their secrets, or at least give you regular sound advice on the boss’s movements and moods.

Always employ too few people

Being a little short-staffed at work makes the staff you’ve got work harder and really push to do their best.

Also, strangely enough, it’s often the companies where the staff are really working hard that have the best team morale. Probably because most people get a real achievement and adrenalin buzz when they’re giving it all they’ve got.

The trick, of course, is to know the difference between stretching staff levels and reaching breaking point.

Work with urgency

Remember Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the time allotted to it. In other words, when you’ve got lots of time you use it all, and when you’ve got only a little time you somehow get the job completed anyway.

Why do we usually complete the task even if we have a shortage of time? Primarily because when we push ourselves, we think a lot faster and act a lot faster.

This being the case, it makes a lot of sense to create ‘false urgency’ whenever you’re at work. By setting short deadlines on most tasks you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done in a week.

Urgency works, and is a crucial weapon in any top performer’s armoury.

Understand international business lag.

A lot of people have made their fortunes taking a good product or business concept from one country to another.

This is because even in this age of globalisation, it’s often years before good ideas spread to other countries.

Take advantage of this lag time. Next time you’re on vacation overseas, keep an eye out for products or services that would be a big hit in your own country.

The world is full of people who have made millions, and even billions, using this technique.