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

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.

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.

The United States is the only advanced economy with no paid parental leave for either mothers or fathers.

As long as you're pushing men to stay at work, you're pushing women to stay home.

I take solace in knowing that some of the steps I took can help other people.

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

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.

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