Here are some things to look out for to help you improve your time management and get more balance in your life:

Small and medium-sized practices are perhaps the most vulnerable to the 'always on' culture of overworking. Increasingly dependent on mobiles, Blackberrys, email and internet, it's easy to get caught up on a treadmill of endless work tasks that diminish your time for leisure, friends and family. In the worst cases this leads to stress.

It goes without saying that good staff relations are essential to maintaining a happy and healthy workplace. Nevertheless, a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development last year revealed that only 37 per cent of employees have confidence in their senior management team and 34 per cent trust their senior managers.

It's probably one of the least favourite tasks for a manager, but not formally ticking off a staff member when they're out of line will cause the matter to linger, if not worsen.

What you focus on expands. That is, if you're worrying about not having enough business, then that's all you're going to see and that's all that will show up.

There's a simple way to answer this for yourself. Choose any aspect of your own business, other than your own specialist expertise.

WARREN Buffett recently seized the opportunity to invest in Goldman Sachs and net a $783 million paper profit. Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary is plotting to buy oil when he thinks the price can't fall any further and is busy making plans to launch a low fares transatlantic airline.

"What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are." (Edgar Z Friedenberg)

In speaking to a lot of people over the last couple of weeks, I'm noticing a paralysis setting in, and quite a bad one at that. A paralysis in the sense of not knowing what to do, or a feeling of well I'm doing everything but I'm not getting anywhere.

Surely any small business owner who spends enough time twittering, blogging, Facebooking, and texting while being LinkedIn should have no trouble generating new business?