It's a well-documented fact that those who have written goals will be more successful, healthier and wealthier than those who don't. In fact a whole new profession of coaching has sprung up, to help you define and attain your goals.

But if your life-coach asked you to list your goals and you included 'Winning the Lottery' - you'd probably told, gently, that winning the lottery is a dream - not a goal.

However, your life-coach would probably then try to help you put your stated goal into a more conventional form, by asking you to specify what 'winning' means for you. Well, to me, 'winning' (in the context of playing the Lottery) is 'coming out in front'. Put more succinctly, if you spend five pounds a week on the Lottery, you're a winner if you emerge with more than five pounds a week over the long-term.

Now obviously, one Jackpot win - particularly with your first ticket - is going to achieve this. But it's pretty unlikely to happen - and I suspect your life-coach would still be very suspicious of including this as a goal.

However, this same coach might be a lot more open to listening if you were to explain that you were running a full or part-time business that would attack the goal in two ways. One way is to improve your chances of winning, and the second way is to generate an income stream that means you are effectively playing for free - so always coming out in front.

To maximise your winnings - you need to maximise the number of lines you buy. But this needn't be as expensive as you'd first think, as the most economical way to maximise your number of lines is in a syndicate. Many people dismiss this approach, thinking that playing in a syndicate will reduce your winnings because they're shared out. In the syndicate I joined, you will always win more than if you were playing alone. Syndicate member Steve told the organisers: "I played the same numbers with the UK National Lotto and with your system. With the UK National Lotto I won