In this section

I'd rather be described as a naive enthusiast than a cynic. If you find yourself sneering, go find something that makes you cheer.

Some of our most successful students are also musicians or singers or actors or athletes; balance is crucial. You have to think how or what the right balance is in your life, what ingredients in what proportions would work for you; and it's best if you can establish a sense of balance before university. You can always alter it later.

Making best use of your time away from work, whether an evening, a weekend or 3 months between jobs, is one of the least developed skills yet one of the most important. Try taking your leisure time a lot more seriously, so as to fill it with recuperative, replenishing experiences rather than draining ones. It's self-defeating to work so hard that all you want to do is zonk-out afterwards, and watching TV and getting drunk are not activities designed to regenerate your mental and physical resources.

Being in psychological 'good shape' is not a yes or no answer that you tick on an application form. It's something that you can build up, and build upon, and improve and increase as you move through life. You'll always be glad of your psychological skills: your ability to negotiate your way through problems, your ability to make choices, to ask for help, to make a difference, to plan, to relax, and to feel confident.

Only by maintaining your highest level of physical fitness can you be at your best mentally. Sometimes people scoff at that and point towards out-of-shape success stories. But I wonder just how much better that person might have done had they also had their physical faculties at full strength.

Step-by-step planning and problem solving are overwhelmingly voted the hardest and most tiring mental activities when people compare them to fantasising or watching TV. It would seem that reality with all its social and physical constraints to be negotiated, is akin to swimming against the current - hard work! Whereas fantasy worlds are effectively a 'zero gravity environment' offering little or no resistance to the thinker's will. The implication is that if you want to build up the thinking equivalent of 'mental muscle', do as much planning and problem solving as possible.

Put as much thought into ways to re-kindle and recuperate yourself as you put into expending your energy in the first place. Rather than just grinding to a halt, try to find an activity which unwinds what you've being doing all day. For instance, if you've been sitting still solving problems at a desk, try something very active that requires emotional expression.