Do you ever strum your fingers on the desk top as you look down at your work and think, Right, how can I do all this lot without really working?

Brought up in an era with a clich that went: You must work hard for a living my attitude to work conflicted with what Id learned from my elders and peers. I felt wrong because I wanted to be lazy. I felt guilty for wanting to do as little as possible and unworthy in my role as office manager for an insurance brokerage. But I tell you Ive cracked it! Ive discovered how to maximize my results without working like a dog.

When I tell you how easy this is, you might not believe me. When I tell you how easy this is youll probably think that the idea is so alien to your work hard for a living ethics that you wont want to believe me, so before I share my secret to success with you, let me first tell you something worth bearing in mind

Every day doctors prescribe more and more anti-depressants, Every month more and more couples separate or divorce; and Every year more and more employees take time off work because of one stress disorder or another.

We work too long we work too hard we get tired we get stressed and we die too young.

So my first secret of success is this: if your work hurts you or depresses you then it is killing you. And Im willing to put money on it that youll find yourself much less effective as a dead person. But you know that there is something inside of you that makes you feel good, something that excites you, something that will bring you life if only you discover how to get to it.

Some people have heart attacks or get cancer with the stress of overwork. Its a pretty rude awakening. Some people review life when they find out they might die soon. My wake up call for working too hard was a fourteen-foot fall, head first onto concrete. The impact hurtnaturally! But more importantly it knocked enough sense into my skull to make me realise how precious life is and served as a reminder that I really needed to get back to creating that system of not working too hard.

My second secret is to substitute the word hard for efficiently. Who wants to work with their nose to the grindstone, their shoulder to the wheel and their ears to the ground for one thing its a very uncomfortable position to work! For another I dont believe your posture will help your brain flow with creative ideas. Before I tell you my effective work posture let me just briefly explain what I do for a living.

Im a writer, author of a novel, Black Water, and two personal development books, Steps to Greater Happiness and Be the Hero in your Own Life. Now you might think as a writer I sit at a desk all day with a pen or a laptop and write page after page, but thats not the case. And here is my second secret.

I work my hardest when Im flat out, on the couch, bed or floor. I solve more problems, write more dialogue and create much better ideas for plots when Im not sitting upright bashing away at the keyboard. Its a bit like when you go to bed and suddenly remember something you should have done earlier in the day, its tapping into the subconscious and working efficiently and not hard.

But I know most of you probably dont work in that kind of environment. You work in a busy office where youre practically chained to a desk. So what do you do? Sit in a park at lunch, listen to the birds, listen to the sounds of people walking by, chill out and then ask yourself what you need to do. Take an extended coffee break, lock yourself in a toilet cubicle and take five. If a colleague comes looking for you tell them youre on your creative thrown, problem solving!

So, the keys to creating success with ease are: find work you love and try out my method of working efficiently.