The more armed we are with information about the seduction of technology, the more we can build systems to better deal with it. I had no idea that I got a hit of dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone that also governs addiction, every time that little email bing goes off.

We live in a really crazy time when there is information coming at you, and there are so many demands on your time. It really comes down to choosing your own priorities and forgiving yourself a lot and checking your own expectations.

I think that was probably one of the biggest revelations, is leisure is really in the eyes of the beholder...

If you had the perception that you are very stressed out then your grey matter was fully 20 per cent smaller in volume than people who did not have that same feeling. This is the grey matter in your prefrontal cortex: It controls thinking, learning, planning, decision-making. That matters because when we are feeling more stressed, that is when we are at our most vulnerable in our inability to think our way out of it.

A gift, like a good friend drawing a personal road map out of the crazy busy swirl of our overloaded lives.

What if not just women, but both men and women, worked smart, more flexible schedules? What if the workplace itself was more fluid than the rigid and narrow ladder to success of the ideal worker? And what if both men and women became responsible for raising children and managing the home, sharing work, love, and play? Could everyone then live whole lives?

I have trashed the to-do list. To help my brain...