I'll never forget having a meeting with the prominent agent to celebrities, Harry M Miller, years ago.

On his notice board he had a sign with just three words of advice.

'Prune The Tree.'

I was intrigued, as Harry lived in an apartment 30 stories above street level, with not a tree around.

"Oh that's my philosophy of life," he remarked, as I questioned him about it.

"It's there to remind me to always make sure I prune my life of clients and business relationships that are no longer ripe with opportunity.

I find that if I’m not careful, I end up being slowed down by situations that I really should have evolved away from."

Pruning the tree of life is an intriguing notion, and well worth considering at least once a year.

What should we all prune from our trees?

Clients who don't respect us.

One way friendships.

Beliefs about ourselves that no longer serve us.

Plans that no longer fit our desires.

When you pause to think about it, there's a lot to prune on the tree of life.

How's your tree looking?

It's true, pruning will temporarily make your life smaller.

But soon after, it will grow stronger, healthier and far more beautiful.

Most people think that top entrepreneurs are obsessed by money.

While it's certainly up there on their list of priorities, I don't think it's the lead driver for many of them.

A recent book by British economist John Kay, entitled 'Obliquity. Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly' shows that many of the best performing businesses were built by people who didn't pursue wealth as their holy grail.

It was purely a bi-product of their need to achieve, to change the world, to feel better about themselves, or to leave a legacy.

Kay shows that companies like Boeing, Ford and Microsoft were driven by much loftier goals than filthy lucre. And ironically that is precisely why they ended up making so much of it.

That money is somewhat down the priority list for many billionaires may shock a lot of people, but it won't surprise those who have made a heap of dollars.

All the research shows that we quickly become used to living on a larger amount, and it then does virtually nothing to increase our happiness.

For example, in a study done by the king of happiness psychology, Ed Diener, members of the Forbes 400 Rich List reported only 1% greater happiness than the average American wage earner.

And what delights the rich, long term, if it isn't money?

Well, in a piece in Fortune magazine recently, Warren Buffett wrote, “The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, long standing friends."

A good reminder to those of us who may be slowly destroying our friendships as we desperately chase a few more dollars.

I had an interesting, but painful experience recently.

I spent 6 months using a business consultant for a commercial issue I was involved in.

After spending over 100 grand, I still had no clear resolution in sight, or even clarity over the next steps to finalizing it.

Then I went to another one who charged vastly more, yet in 3 hours he had worked out how to finish it once and for all.

What a lesson.

Here I was thinking I was being cost efficient by going with somebody cheaper, but the opposite was actually the case.

When we look at the total cost (in time, effectiveness and money) the expensive guy turned out to be incredibly cheap.

And the less expensive consultant ended up being outrageously expensive.

In a free market economy, the best people almost always charge more, because they can.

Don't make my mistake. If you can possibly afford it, choose the best upfront and save yourself the angst and cost of dealing with the average performers.

Now here's the tricky bit.

Some of the more wily average performers charge a fortune too. So who you choose can't be purely based on price.

You need to check with other senior people working in their industry.

In most industries, the customer often has no idea who the elite performers are.

But people working in that industry always do.

I'm currently receiving instructions on how to live a great life.

Not from a philosopher, a self-help guru or shrink, but from our new kitten, who arrived 3 days ago.

I've been amazed at how this little furry one takes the time to play around throughout the day.

He's not unusual. Almost all of the creatures in the animal kingdom are the same.

It got me thinking, is play not a natural state for humans?

Well I think that it's reasonable to assume it is, simply because as children our attitude is highly playful.

Only as we get conditioned by the heaviness of modern daily life, does our playful mode of thought diminish.

There seems to be a collective belief amongst adults that being playful means that we are not serious about our work.

Yet I've seen no research that shows that being playful reduces work effectiveness. To the contrary, I've seen several books that show persuasively that it improves it.

And every so often, we all meet an executive who performs superbly, yet remains light, fun and happy.

These people inevitably become linchpins in society, centres of influence in their workplace, their very playfulness adding to their mastery.

Intelligently playful people are highly magnetic to those who work with them.

So I think it's time we consciously developed a sense of play at work. It's not easy in a culture that for some reason admires stressed, busy people, but if we can do it, then we'll not only enhance our own lives, but the lives of those who both live and work with us.

I believe we will end up wealthier too. Not just in money, but in something far more precious.

Well being.

Every day we are hit with articles about people who have built huge businesses almost instantly.

Facebook. Red Bull. Amazon. Google. The entrepreneur is the new rock star.

The examples seem so plentiful they give the impression that these rags to riches scenarios are the norm.

The stats, however, show they are anything but.

Almost every great business started slowly.

Walmart had only 2 stores for its first 7 years. Now it's the third biggest company in the world.

Marriott has thousands of hotels worldwide. But it started with just one root beer stand.

Merck is valued at over $50 billion. But it struggled initially with just a single small pharmacy.

Starbucks has over 16,000 stores, but for the first 13 years it only had 5.

Nike took years before it exceeded $1m in revenue.

So please remember this as you try to build something great.

If you're doing it slow and tough, you just may be doing it right.

Keep persisting. Keep refining. Keep visioning. But most of all keep moving forward.

For almost everyone, the road to greatness is long.

Despite what the media may say.

How did Japan recover so quickly after World War II?

They were assisted greatly by Americans teaching them modern manufacturing and management techniques.

One of the most renowned of these was William Edwards Deming, who pushed both the concept of Quality and Continuous Improvement.

The Japanese embraced the concept of continuous improvement so much they even invented a term for it, 'Kaizen'.

It works for manufacturing, but Kaizen is also a highly effective tool for personal performance excellence too.

Tiny improvements can have astronomical benefits over time.

Take, for instance, achievement expert Brian Tracy's Continuous Improvement Formula.

Tracy postulates that if we want to advance in any area, all we need to do is get better at doing it by one tenth of one percent a week.

It seems a ridiculously small amount to make a difference, but if we did improve by such a miniscule percentage, there would be some stunning results.

After one month we'd have improved 2%.

After a year, 24%

Allowing for compounding, we would actually double our effectiveness in 2.7 years. We would literally be twice as good as we currently are!

And after a decade we would be a massive 1004% better at whatever we chose to focus on.

Now that is staggering progress, especially when you consider that many people don't improve at all, most years.

It's surely worth taking 3 minutes to decide an area that you would like to get better at, and committing to one tenth of one percent improvement each week.

By simply aiming to get a little bit better, consistently, and measuring your progress as best you can, you will soon leave your competitors behind.

It's a tiny effort, for a massive reward.

Want to improve your productivity in one second?

Make a decision to not accept being interrupted.

Interruptions are one of the greatest destroyers of productivity there is. Yet most of us meekly agree to talk to whoever walks
into our office, calls us, or even worse, emails us.

As a result it often takes us ages to complete key tasks.

It's not just the time wasted while we listen to the interrupters' usually trivial issues.

It's the time it takes to re-concentrate on the job we were working on.

I read research recently that showed it often takes people ten to fifteen minutes to get back into the same focused state of
mind they were in before being interrupted.

All added up, the cost of interruptions is massive.

The solutions are simple, but not easy.

Block out periods of 30 minutes, one hour, even 2 hours where you do nothing but the task at hand.

If someone walks into your office while you're concentrating, tell them, firmly, that you will meet them at another time. Or put
up a sign saying you'll be free from a particular hour. Or best of all, leave the office and work in a park, a cafe or at home.
Frequently.

This will be challenging for some people, as their bosses and fellow workers will put pressure on them to be available all
the time.

Of course there are times when, for the sake of the relationship, you will have to relent and speak to the interrupters.

But to consistently give in to these people, is to accept that you will be functioning far below your real potential.

And to anybody serious about excellence, that is unacceptable.

I've just come back from Dubai as guest of Sheikh Maktoum.

As you can imagine, with such a generous host, I experienced some magnificent moments.

But one of the most interesting occurred in my hotel room at the plush Madinet Jumeirah Resort.

Returning one evening, I noticed that sitting on my bed was a little booklet entitled 'Herbal Pillows'.

Opening it up, I discovered this hotel was offering me no less than 9 different kinds of pillows!

The Hangover Pillow, with a blend of juniper, mustard and peppermint inside it, used by traditional healers to reduce headaches.

The Tranquillity Pillow, with chamomile, ginger and spearmint.

There were Love Pillows, Dream Pillows, and Energy Pillows. And Meditation, Stress, Eye, and even Sun Sign pillows.

Now isn't that an amazing thing, I thought.

I am in one of the most expensive, opulent and spectacular hotels on the planet.

Yet one of the most impressive parts of this palace is a tiny booklet, promising me an extraordinary range of pillows.

It cost them hardly any money at all to create this unique service.

But it sets them apart from almost every other luxury hotel in the world.

Surely we all could come up with something like this for our own businesses. Something relatively cheap, but surprising, delightful and memorable.

What could be your equivalent of this Dubai hotel's pillow menu?

Sleep on it.

Yesterday I read a quote that made a huge impact on me.

It was from Charlie Chaplin, surely one of the greatest entertainers in history.

Here it is:  "You have to believe in yourself. That’s the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street
trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world."

The reason it struck me so powerfully was that it made me wonder whether I was seeing myself as I am now, or as I want to be.

Throughout the last 1000 years, great people have given similar advice, from the Persian poet Rumi to Henry Ford: we must behave
as if we already are the person we want to become. We must act like we are, before we truly are.

It's tough to do, because it demands an act of blind faith. And even arrogance.

Yet the frequency with which outstanding achievers throughout history have offered the same counsel, makes me certain that it's a
more effective strategy for success than being 'humble', and downplaying our strengths to ourselves. And others.

We cannot create a brilliant future by seeing ourselves only in the present.

If your mind is the clay of your future, what are you creating with it?

One of the worst jobs in America is 'Sign Holder'.

You see them on the streets, holding up a sign pointing to a shop or car park.

For hours a day they stand there in the wind, rain or burning sunshine, holding up their trivial sign, bored out of their minds.

For anyone with a speck of self worth, it's the ultimate demeaning job.

Which is why I was stunned recently when I was driving along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

There was a sign holder performing a highly skilled, electrifying dance routine, balancing the sign at all angles, twisting it around his body at high speed.

Motorists at the traffic lights were transfixed, and so was I.

This guy had taken a terrible job and turned it into something magical, delighting thousands of people every hour.

So many of us are stuck in jobs we don't like, and make the mistake of doing them half heartedly, drudging through them miserably. But acting that way doesn't make our work easier, it does the opposite. Time marches more slowly, our mood stays dark and we never get a promotion out of that job because we're not doing it well enough.

If only we performed our job brilliantly, in a way far above what anyone could expect, we would feel so much better about ourselves, make greater progress and enjoy life far more.

As the great football coach, Vince Lombardi said, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavour".

Whatever job we have, the secret is to do it superbly. Not just for a chance of promotion, but far more importantly, for our own self worth.

Choosing to be excellent is a better way to live.