Busyness is now the social norm that people feel they must conform to, Burnett says, or risk being outcasts.

Busyness is now the social norm that people feel they must conform to, Burnett says, or risk being outcasts.

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.

What's happening now with technology is we live with very porous boundaries. All those little interruptions fragment our time and attention and make us feel like work never ends. It makes us feel like we don't ever have that sacred time for family or to breathe or meditate or for leisure. Time is contaminated for everyone. I'm hoping that as we get used to these technologies we'll get smarter about how we use them and also how to shut them off.

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

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

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