Your breath and your mind have an intimate relationship, if your breathing is fast and shallow it can stir up your thoughts and increase your stress, but if you learn to notice your breath and slow it down, you can reign your thoughts in and calm your mind.

Procrastinators have never had such a variety of things to do that really mean you’re doing nothing, nothing that will get you nearer your goals anyway.

How many times have you reacted to stress by blurting out a harsh response and escalating the situation? It can be hard not to. If you're already simmering then any extra little stress is going to provoke a spurt of steam, sometimes your steam just evaporates into the air, but sometimes it scalds people around you and that's not a good thing. So how can you stop those spontaneous eruptions?

A recent study at the University of Connecticut encouraged participants to try simple stress relief techniques that involved breathing slowly and visualising a peaceful place and found that: “Just four ‘mini relaxation’ stress management sessions (1 1/2 to 2 minutes) over the course of the day reduced work-related stress as effectively as 15-minute blocks of progressive muscle relaxation.”