As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative.

The big message is that we need to reimagine and re-engineer how we work - what does work mean and how do we measure what's good? The second thing we need to reimagine is our relationships - who does what and why? One of the biggest things that has helped me and my husband is coming up with a common set of standards about what it takes to run our house, what is a fair way to divide tasks, and how are we going to keep each other accountable?

It's become such a cultural norm that people brag about it: "Oh yeah, you did that? I did this." Keeping up with the Joneses used to be about "I have the bigger house and car," and now it's much more about how much stuff you can cram into your calendar.

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

As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative.

Because this is how it feels to live my life: scattered, fragmented, and exhausting.

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