Pace Yourself

Life these days can feel like an endless, exhausting to do list with far too many “to-dos” and not nearly enough time to complete them. Self-help gurus will tell you to time block, to wake up at five am, to try the Pomodoro method, and get rid of everything in your life that doesn’t spark joy—but the reality is you can’t bullet journal your way out of exhaustion. Instead, science journalist Amy Arthur argues for a radical new approach. We must learn to manage not our time, but our energy.

While time passes at the same rate for everyone, energy expenditure is as fluid and as individual as our personalities. In PACE YOURSELF, Arthur draws on cutting edge research as well as her experience managing her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, to walk readers through how to find and maintain their ideal pace of life. Featuring experts across science, technology, history and philosophy, PACE YOURSELF lays out what we know about our bodies’ energy stores: how we make it, how we use it, how we often waste it, and what we can do to renew our relationship with it. Some of the ideas presented are at the forefront of scientific and medical research, from fields like nutrition, biology, psychology and physics. Others are exercises that you can complete on a spare sheet of paper, but that are sure to reshape how you think about the energy you spend throughout your day.

It is time we stop lying to ourselves that we can do it all. PACE YOURSELF introduces readers to a vital new framework to know their limits, work within them, and, ultimately, watch themselves flourish in this new, balanced pace of life.