Unlike cake, you can have your toast and eat it. But how much do you need to keep yourself going? Gorge yourself and you become fat and uncomfortable; skimp and you're always hungry. In my experience, to only do the things that pay well means you miss out on some of the most rewarding opportunities to make a difference. But spend too much time doing stuff for free and you may find it hard to put food on your plate.

Striking a happy balance between paid work and volunteering is I guess something we all wrestle with. I certainly do. The opportunity of course is to invest your pro bono time in things that will add value to the time you get paid for elsewhere.

One of my biggest challenges is to focus on the stuff that really matters. When there's so much change and opportunity, it really is easy to spread yourself too thinly. Fact is the only way to taste success is to give yourself time and mental capacity to do what will achieve the most and be the most rewarding.

Here are a few examples of what's working for me right now:

• Delivering challenging keynote conference sessions on Big Society and collaboration;
• Facilitating charity Trustee 'away-days' that get people thinking differently, grasping their funding nettles and planning to succeed;
• Running enterprise workshops to help mental health service users become self employed;
• Creating exciting new joint ventures that make community enterprise possible where it's never been possible before.

Let me know if I can help you do any of these things better!