The Art of Pacing: A Guide to Balancing Short-Term Demands with Long-Term Thriving

by Elizabeth Svoboda

A guide to long-term pacing that balances hustle and leisure, whether you’re chasing bold dreams or just trying to stay afloat in daily life, inspired by the strategies of elite athletes and renowned psychologists.

Every distance runner knows this cardinal don’t go too fast, or you’ll drain your energy well before the finish line. Intuitive for athletes, most of us struggle to pace ourselves in daily life. We find ourselves caught between two an endless sprint, or complete disengagement. Yet, cultivating this pacing sensibility can give us the breathing room we need to create a rich, meaningful life, all while making meaningful progress on our goals.

In The Art of Pacing, science writer Elizabeth Svoboda explores how shifting between the full range of paces can transform the way you reach your goals. Blending memoir, cutting-edge research, and interviews with Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs, Svoboda artfully uncovers the nuances of pacing and provides techniques to adjust your tempo across life’s challenges, so you can effectively balance ambition with rest. You’ll

- How to determine your natural “pulse points” so you can reserve your most important work for your circadian high points and build in plenty of restorative rest.

- Why practicing modulation lays important groundwork for designing a life that nourishes you.

- What brief candle moments are, and how you can use them in your life to build in strategic, meaningful pauses.

- How narrative reflection reveals what gives you a sense of purpose, so you can pare excess from your life and make space for what matters.

Written with the perfect mix of soul and science, The Art of Pacing offers a refreshing alternative to all-or-nothing living—and reveals the path toward lasting success.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology

240 pages, Hardcover

Published June 16, 2026

About the author

I write about the science of what motivates people and helps them thrive. My newest book is The Art of Pacing (S&S), about how to set a sustainable pace in a speed-obsessed world. I am also the author of What Makes a Hero? The Surprising Science of Selflessness (Penguin Random House), and for kids, The Life Heroic: How to Unleash Your Most Amazing Self (Lerner). In addition, I've written for publications like the Boston Globe, Scientific American, Greater Good, Psychology Today, and the New York Times.

I grew up in Western New York and live in San Jose, CA with my husband, Eric, and our two energetic young boys.

Reviews

[Lisa Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a chronic illness therapist, I talk to my clients about pacing ALL the time, or energy management as we sometimes call it. So I picked up this book with that chronic illness lens, but this isn’t a book about chronic illness pacing at all-it’s much more broad, although lots of it would be applicable & useful for chronic illness. No, this book is a call to action to ALL of us heading toward burnout, with a stance that our capitalist grind culture is really unsustainable and unhealthy for anyone, sick or not. Following some of the advice in this book might KEEP you from getting sick. This book covers a multitude of topics - regulating breath, taking digital breaks, flow states, dealing with feeling selfish, and how to make pacing more important collectively. If every manager and CEO would buy this book, we’d be living in a different world!

[Michelle Glogovac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Elizabeth Svoboda and thoroughly enjoyed her other book, WHAT MAKES A HERO?. I loved THE ART OF PACING for a multitude of reasons. One of the biggest is the way Elizabeth immerses herself into experimenting firsthand all of the ways we can pace ourselves and sharing her own reflections...kind of like a try it before you buy it! After reading this book, I found myself thinking about breathwork as I went through my day and with Elizabeth in my head. I was grateful for the approach on activism and adored the section on brief candles. Elizabeth has a unique talent of bridging science and making it relatable for us through her work. This is a must-read, especially now but it will remain necessary far into the future.

[Michael Drew]

The Art of Pacing: A Guide to Balancing Short Term Demands with Long, Term Thriving by Elizabeth Svoboda offers a thoughtful and well researched approach to managing energy, ambition, and sustainability in both personal and professional life. Drawing inspiration from athletes, psychology, and real world experiences, the book reframes success not as constant acceleration, but as the ability to move intentionally between effort and recovery.

What makes this book particularly compelling is its focus on pacing as a skill that can be learned and refined. By introducing concepts like “pulse points” and strategic pauses, it provides readers with practical ways to better align their energy with their goals. The integration of scientific research with relatable examples creates a balanced and accessible reading experience.

Another strength lies in its rejection of all or nothing thinking. Instead of promoting relentless productivity or complete disengagement, the book emphasizes modulation adjusting effort over time to sustain performance and well-being. This perspective is especially relevant in today’s fast-paced environment, where burnout is increasingly common.

At its core, The Art of Pacing is about creating a sustainable rhythm for growth and fulfillment. It encourages readers to rethink how they approach ambition, rest, and purpose, offering a path toward long term thriving rather than short-term exhaustion. This makes it a valuable resource for anyone seeking a more balanced and intentional approach to life and work.

[David Bowers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reframes burnout as something much bigger than bad time management. Svoboda opens with an ER doctor who, mid-crisis, stops and takes one deliberate breath before continuing — what researcher Kurt Strange calls a "brief candle," a small window of undivided attention we can choose to light or let burn out unnoticed.

From there she builds a compelling case: early life stress and a weak sense of coherence can prime people for burnout years later, and the most fulfilled people aren't the ones chasing individual wins but the ones Erik Erikson would call generative — focused on lasting contribution. Maslow's idea of "healthy selfishness" gets a nice turn here too: protecting your own energy isn't selfish, it's what makes sustained contribution possible.

I loved the friction the book creates with William Penn's famous "I shall not pass this way again" quote — urgency versus pacing, and knowing which moment calls for which, is really the whole book in miniature.

A genuinely useful, well-researched read on a skill nobody actually teaches: how to pace yourself for the long run.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this part memoir, part researched-backed guide to balancing daily demands while cultivating a thriving workspace. Zero difficulty diving in as it aligns much to my trust in science in determining the measured tempo or sustained pacing that best fits my lifestyle.

TMI I applied the long exhale breathing technique while digesting this book. Silly but it worked. There were chapters that stood out more than others, specifically on modulation and I will be revisiting it again. The mention of DJ DiDonna in tandem with the benefits of a sabbatical was another high point. This book connected countless dots for me.

Last, I appreciate the resounding motif and parallels to being a pro distant runner; it felt concrete all the while highly symbolic to the flow of a marathon.

Overall, a very edifying and applicable book. Who knew reading an articulate piece of nonfiction could be so refreshing and therapeutic. Recommending this one! Check out my Instagram for an alternate review.



Thank you Simon Element / Simon & Schuster for my ARC copy.

[Patricia King · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting examination of many different ways to improve how you pace and experience your life, from the very individual and immediately achievable resonant breathing techniques and story arcing, to a much wider and less accessible description of how to create cultures supporting slowing down. If this book is a guide, it’s not a step by step one. Maybe it’s more of a travel guide, in which you choose which destinations you are most interested in to go learn more about. I recommend it if you have the time and if you don’t, maybe you need it even more.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

You May Be Running the Wrong Race
Elizabeth Svoboda’s “The Art of Pacing” is not a plea to slow down, but a challenge to rethink what all the striving is for
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | May 22nd, 2026

“The Art of Pacing” comes wearing the uniform of a book about slowing down: not false, just incomplete. The shelves are crowded with books for the overextended and career-obedient, promising to make exhaustion more manageable, preferably with better stationery. Elizabeth Svoboda uses that familiar costume to smuggle in a more discomfiting question: who tuned the metronome before we arrived?

Her subject is the approval apparatus that teaches children to perform worth, offices to mistake stamina for belief, platforms to turn attention into coinage, and causes to conscript conscience. The book is less interested in civilizing the calendar than in asking whose life the calendar has been quietly obeying. What happens, Svoboda asks, when the pace you have been praised into keeping begins to estrange you from your body, your attention, your work, and the purposes you can still recognize as yours?

She begins where her metaphor is most literal: at the Boston Trail Half Marathon, where pacers hold finish-time signs and try to save runners from one of the most reliable human errors – the belief that feeling magnificent at mile one guarantees magnificence at mile twenty. A pacer’s job is not to make runners heroic. It is to keep them from confusing adrenaline with self-knowledge. Go out too fast, and the body will conduct its own referendum.

From that starting line, Svoboda launches an argument that climbs from track to bloodstream to workplace. “The Art of Pacing” is not suspicious of effort itself, which is one reason it never quite hardens into sermon. Svoboda is too interested in service, craft, love, work, and contribution to offer the hammock as metaphysics. She does not ask readers to stop striving. She asks who set the tempo, what the striving serves, and what gets damaged when exertion becomes borrowed proof rather than chosen work.

The first chapter gives the book its first badly tuned metronome. As a child, Svoboda becomes what her father calls a “scholastic gymnast.” She is trained not on uneven bars but on math tests, poems, essays, science medals, and the bright jolt of adult approval. The image is funny until it is not. The young overachiever learns that attention is unlocked, like a prize cabinet, by being quickest, best, most polished, most impressive. Svoboda then shows how that private apprenticeship in approval becomes a national choreography of striving: AP overload, gold stars, résumé accumulation, elite-school competition, and the zero-sum dread that someone else’s success has somehow stolen oxygen from the room.

This could have become a well-worn scolding of achievement culture. Svoboda makes it harder to wave away by putting the body on the witness stand. In “A Biological Reckoning,” Patty Johnson, a doctoral student, mother, caregiver, and eldest daughter of Indian immigrant parents, begins to lose hair, suffer headaches, and register alarming glucose and blood-pressure readings. Hannah Oravec, trying to build a design business while working punishing hours, watches stress throw her hormones into disorder and threaten her hopes of starting a family. Svoboda tracks her own heart-rate variability and cortisol, finding evidence of a nervous system that behaves less like a household appliance than like a sports car parked where everyone keeps testing the alarm.

The body, denied a vote for long enough, files its minority report in symptoms.

Svoboda is at her shrewdest when she shifts pacing from the old fantasy of gritting through to the practice of noticing before damage becomes instruction. Notice what the body is saying. Notice whether a goal still fits. Notice whether the phone has turned a five-minute pause into a casino without windows. Notice whether generosity has become moral conscription. Notice whether a team’s cheerful wellness initiative is a lavender candle arranged on top of a structural fire.

“The Art of Pacing” keeps changing scale, moving from the race clock to the nervous system, from the inbox to the sickroom, from private breath to collective culture. “Plotting a Narrative Arc” uses Ben Rogers’s “re-storying” exercise to argue that people need a sense of purpose before they can decide what deserves their energy. The hero’s-journey language could have drifted into poster-board myth, but Svoboda mostly keeps it tethered to the sorting of competing claims on the self: what is central, what is inherited, what can be set down? In her own re-storying, she moves from wanting to help people feel less alone to a sharper calling: naming difficult realities, making the invisible visible, giving readers language for what they may have sensed but not yet articulated.

“Find Your Pulse” turns to Olympic runner Ajee Wilson, whose “rigid flexibility” is one of the book’s most portable ideas. Wilson trains hard, but she does so with respect for energy peaks, recovery windows, and the daily truth of the body she actually has. Svoboda contrasts this with the paper theater of precision in time-management systems that slice the day into crisp little units while ignoring the fact that attention is not a deli counter. A calendar can say when the work begins. It cannot say whether the person arriving at that work is alert, depleted, resentful, or quietly becoming a ghost.

The chapter most likely to follow a reader off the page is “The Art of Modulation.” It opens in an emergency room, where Joe Arpaia, then a medical student, watches an experienced surgeon pause during a crisis, take a long exhale, and spot the hidden source of a patient’s bleeding. That breath becomes the chapter’s small clinical revelation. Arpaia later develops “unease modulation,” using resonant breathing and long exhales to settle the nervous system quickly enough to think. Svoboda tests the technique herself, watching her heart-rate tracing change within seconds. The practice does not make life frictionless. It does something humbler and more useful: it creates the interval in which one might not send the bad email, accept the hollow assignment, pick the fight, or mistake panic for information.

This is where the book is most forgiving without becoming soft. Some physical states are not compatible with wise decisions. The mind, in Svoboda’s account, is not a tiny sovereign issuing polished decrees to the body. It is more like an upstairs tenant. When the pipes below are shaking, the tenant may wish to postpone the manifesto.

The chapter on digital life, “Digital Triage,” applies the same logic to attention. Drawing on Natasha Dow Schüll’s “ludic loop,” Svoboda compares social feeds to slot-machine play: repetitive, rewarding, empty, and hard to leave. Her point is not that phones are bad, a complaint worn smooth by overuse. Much online life creates a counterfeit middle state. Scrolling feels active, but it is not meaningful work; it feels restful, but it does not restore. Time limits, she notes, may backfire by giving people permission to use every allotted minute. Her better answer is not abstinence but terms of entry: go online for a reason, leave when the reason is satisfied, and replace frictionless vacancy with something that actually returns energy. Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” is a useful neighbor here, though Svoboda is more practical and less artfully elusive.

In the middle stretch, Svoboda rescues flow and attention from their sellable disguises. “Flourishing in Flow” argues against the corporate fantasy that flow is a cheat code for doing more faster. In Svoboda’s account, flow asks for challenge, intrinsic motivation, and self-forgetting. Climber Alannah Yip, qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, moves so intuitively that her body seems to solve the wall before self-consciousness can interfere. Violinist Diane Allen calls it “getting into the music.” The point is not that flow makes the worker more efficient. The point is that it returns the worker to an activity worth being absorbed by.

From absorption, the book turns to attention. “Brief Candles” is Svoboda’s term for short acts of undivided presence whose consequences far outlast their duration: the doctor who knows a patient well enough to intervene before workplace violence; the family friend who asks a child what she has been reading and writing; the principal who offers mercy with six words; Luma Mufleh joining refugee children in a parking-lot soccer game, a small encounter that helps kindle a larger mission. A brief candle is not networking, not optimization, not a transaction dressed in linen. It is attention without invoice or scoreboard. The chapter matters because it pushes pacing past self-protection. A well-paced person is not merely calmer. She is more available.

Availability, too, has a fuse. “Selfless Pacing” is the book checking its own piety. Abby Reyes, an environmental justice advocate, keeps working after the murder of her boyfriend and fellow activist Terence Unity Freitas until her body breaks down so severely she has to relearn how to walk. Through Reyes, caregivers, activists, nonprofit workers, and researchers on pathological altruism, Svoboda examines the point at which service begins drafting the self into disappearance. Helping can nourish; it can also turn into identity, compulsion, and a community-sanctioned way of vanishing. “Healthy selfishness” may not be the most graceful phrase in the book, but it is one of the most necessary. A cause that burns through everyone who loves it has mistaken sacrifice for strategy.

The book breathes most visibly in “Dropping off the Map,” where Svoboda travels to France during the chassé-croisé, the great summer exchange between July vacationers returning and August vacationers departing. The chapter is full of stations, shuttered shops, lavender, and the almost foreign idea that work might remain near the edge of a life rather than at its throne. Long breaks, in Svoboda’s account, do not simply replenish energy; they permit questions to surface that the daily din keeps pressing underwater. Borrowing from Etty Hillesum, she gives extended retreat its best image: the “great sunny plain” of unbroken time. She also knows that such plains are not distributed equally. Not everyone can take a sabbatical, ignore email, go freelance, or persuade an employer that absence is a human allowance, not a clerical mistake.

That uneven access gives “Collective Pacing” its force. Svoboda moves from private recalibration to shared culture, from the person trying to breathe through overload to the workplace that keeps pumping smoke into the room. Daryl Appleton works with surgical residents at Brown, teaching trust, disclosure, prioritization, and the supposedly soft skills without which hard professions become attrition machines. Leah Weiss helps teams assess burnout and renegotiate workload before collapse becomes the only honest feedback mechanism. Svoboda is especially sharp on corporate wellness pantomime: yoga classes, snacks, meditation tips, and other pleasant items placed where a functioning system ought to be. Pacing at work is not only the number of hours logged. It is what happens inside those hours: whether people can tell the truth, ask for help, shift demands, and trust their colleagues not to punish need.

“The Art of Pacing” belongs near “The Burnout Challenge” by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter, “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman, and “Rest” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, but the thing Svoboda adds to this crowded shelf is relational. She is less interested in time as a philosophical scandal, or rest as a performance multiplier, than in pace as the condition that lets a person remain capable of judgment and care.

The cost of the book’s reach is that its governing image occasionally strains under its luggage. By the time Svoboda gathers Tricia Hersey’s Rest Temple, Carl Honoré’s slow-living advocacy, Jo Hawkes’s PACE Moments, pandemic stillness, tang ping, selective mediocrity, attention-extracting platforms, climate anxiety, education systems, dominance politics, and growth economics, one can feel the metaphor sweating politely through its shirt. Much of this belongs. Not all of it can receive equal depth. The book’s proof is strongest where it can touch the floor: the stressed body, the overextended caregiver, the trapped scroller, the resident in a brutal training culture, the activist trying to stay whole in the slipstream. Its largest claims about collective repair are moving and plausible, but they function as horizon, not proof.

Svoboda’s writing works less by dazzle than by traction: it gives abstract strain a surface the reader can feel underfoot. Her sentences usually move in the clean rhythm of reported explanatory prose – scene, research, consequence. She can handle heart-rate variability, cortisol, flow states, and “teleoanticipation” without turning the page into a pamphlet. Her metaphors do real work: the scholastic gymnast, the ludic loop, the brief candle, the hermit crab shell. When she shifts into prompts and exercises, the prose becomes more dutiful. That is the price of usefulness. The book sometimes wants to be an essay, a reported investigation, a guide, and a workbook at once. Usually it manages the costume changes. Occasionally a sleeve catches.

The structure earns most of its reach because each new domain changes the scale of the question rather than merely furnishing another example. It begins with race pace and ends with life course. It moves from individual exertion to bodily warning, story, energy, breath, attention, flow, service, retreat, team culture, and public movement. A narrower book would have been tidier. It would also have been less interesting. Svoboda’s central achievement is that she turns pacing into an ethic rather than a setting. By the end, pace is not how fast one works. It is how one relates to thresholds, obligations, desire, usefulness, and reality itself.

The conclusion sharpens that achievement by refusing the fake serenity of “balance.” Michele Benoit, successful in marketing but narrowed by the very career that rewards her, first goes freelance and finds more control over her days. Yet schedule freedom does not solve the deeper problem: she is still pointed toward work that no longer fits. Only after pandemic slowdown and further reckoning does she train as a career and life coach, moving toward work that uses her gifts more honestly. The problem, Svoboda suggests, is sometimes not the speed but the destination. One can sprint efficiently toward the wrong life. One can even receive excellent LinkedIn congratulations upon arrival.

A few strings are tuned a little tight when the book reaches for the whole orchestra. Its breadth occasionally crowds it, its advice passages can become dutiful, and its broadest social claims sometimes travel faster than its evidence. But when it plays its governing theme, the note carries. Svoboda’s best insight is that pacing is not steadiness. It is course correction. It is the ongoing practice of asking where you are, what you are trying to reach, what the body knows, what the work costs, and whether the old goal has become a hermit crab shell you should have left behind two molts ago.

My final rating is 86/100, which corresponds to a Goodreads-compatible 4/5 stars.

The book feels most current when it names pressures readers already feel in the wrist, the inbox, the calendar, and the caregiving arrangement: burnout, attention capture, service fatigue, workplace dysfunction, the embarrassment of needing rest in a world that keeps awarding medals for depletion. Yet its afterlife beyond the advice shelf is older than the current vocabulary for ancient exhaustion. A life needs rhythm. A body needs recovery. A purpose needs periodic interrogation. A contribution that destroys its maker has misunderstood something essential.

Svoboda does not finally leave us with the champion breaking the tape, arms raised, the rest of humanity politely defeated. She leaves us with Benoit waking without an alarm, walking through Central Park, stopping to talk without counting the minutes as lost. After all the race talk, that may be the finish line: not victory over others, but the strange relief of no longer needing to outrun a life one has outgrown.

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have selected this book as Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 6/21, as it stands heads above other recently published books on this topic.

[Aaron Mikulsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book argues that sustainable success comes from learning how to vary your effort instead of living in constant overdrive. It frames pacing as a life skill, drawing on runners, athletes, and psychologists to show how rest, timing, and deliberate slowdown can actually improve long-term performance The core message is that many people get trapped between two unhelpful modes: sprinting until they burn out, or disengaging completely. Svoboda’s approach is to find a healthier middle ground by matching tasks to your natural energy peaks, making room for rest, and using pauses as part of the plan rather than as a sign of failure.

A big part of the book is about modulation: shifting speed depending on the moment, rather than treating every task as equally urgent. It also emphasizes “pulse points” for scheduling hard work, “brief candle moments” for short meaningful pauses, and “narrative reflection” as a way to cut away what does not serve your purpose. Another theme is that pacing is not just about personal productivity; it is about building a life that lasts. The book’s practical promise is that if you stop equating nonstop motion with value, you can protect your energy, stay more aligned with what matters, and make steadier progress over time.

The book is organized around themes and strategies rather than a traditional narrative structure. Here is a summary of the core concepts and methodologies presented in the book:

The central premise of the book is that our culture often forces us into an “all-or-nothing” lifestyle—either sprinting to exhaustion or completely checking out. Svoboda argues that the secret to long-term success lies in mastering the “middle of the pacing spectrum,” a range of effort that allows for sustained progress rather than the predictable crash of maximum-effort cycles.

Key Strategies for Pacing
Determining Pulse Points: You are encouraged to identify your natural energy rhythms—or “circadian high points”—to reserve your most significant and demanding work for when you are biologically most capable, while building in deliberate rest.
Proactive Modulation: Rather than waiting until you hit a state of total exhaustion, the book emphasizes making small, proactive shifts in your daily cadence to sustain your energy reserves.
Brief Candle Moments: These are defined as strategic, meaningful, and short pauses designed to help you reset and maintain a sustainable tempo.
Narrative Reflection: Svoboda suggests using reflection to identify what genuinely gives you a sense of purpose. This allows you to pare away excess commitments and focus your energy on what actually matters.

The following insights encapsulate the book’s central arguments:
On the dangers of current culture: “The Art of Pacing names the lie at the heart of modern ambition: that your only choices are burnout or disengagement.”
On the philosophy of pacing: “The path to a meaningful life isn't about going harder. It's about going wiser.”
On the importance of long-term sustainability: “At a moment when speed is often mistaken for progress, Svoboda shows that pacing isn't a luxury—it's a prerequisite for doing meaningful work in the long run.”
Here are memorable takeaways paraphrased from the The Art of Pacing:
Speed is not the same as progress. Moving fast can feel productive, but without restraint it can leave you emptied out before you reach the finish line.
Life tends to swing between two bad extremes. Many people bounce between overdrive and shutdown instead of finding a steadier rhythm.
Pacing is a skill, not a personality trait. It can be learned by paying attention to your natural energy peaks and planning important work around them.
Rest is part of strategy, not a reward for exhaustion. Built-in pauses help preserve energy for what matters most.
Moderation creates room for meaning. A well-paced life leaves space for both ambition and renewal instead of forcing one to cancel the other.
Reflection helps you trim the excess. When you look honestly at your own story, it becomes easier to cut away what does not serve your purpose.
The goal is sustainable success, not constant strain. The book frames pacing as a way to keep moving forward without burning out.

This is a fun, quick read that I’d recommend for anyone who’s “time challenged.”

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m familiar with pacing from a physical perspective, and I loved how Elizabeth Svoboda shows that pacing is just as essential in every part of our lives. Through practical examples, compelling parallels, and clear statistics, she illustrates how deeply hustle culture has been ingrained in us — and how learning to “tune in,” the way runners do, helps us know when to push, when to pull back, and when to simply stay the course.

Too often, we fail to prioritize the activities that would renew and strengthen us if we slowed down enough to let them. Elizabeth connects the daily choices we make with their long‑term consequences and makes a powerful case that neglecting rest is a form of self‑sabotage. Her goal is to help readers pace themselves toward a rich, meaning‑filled life, and she offers tools, reflections, and research‑backed strategies to take tangible steps toward deliberate pacing.

Deliberate pacing means slowing down enough to see things clearly, adjusting course when needed, and embracing recovery practices. Elizabeth shows how pacing creates space to decide where to direct our energy and how it supports meaningful engagement and flourishing. Her advocacy for unscheduled time — for reflection, healing, and sustaining ourselves — is backed by research showing benefits like greater cognitive flexibility and motivation.

A few highlights that stood out to me: Stanford researchers found that people working 70 hours a week accomplish little more than those working 40–50 hours. Those working more than 60 hours are more likely to be injured, and those working more than 48 hours are more likely to become depressed. Prolonged stress interferes with executive function, higher‑order thinking, fulfillment, and emotional regulation — and even causes thinning in the prefrontal cortex, which governs complex decision‑making.

Elizabeth also explores our natural chronobiology, the science of breaks, and how even micro‑breaks can restore us. Research shows that when employees have a flexible rhythm of effort and rest, they feel less stressed and more satisfied with work.

I especially appreciated her chapter on overcommitment — how identity, community expectations, and caregiving roles can push us past our giving limits. She offers thoughtful ways to step back from overextension and reminds us that our physical, mental, and emotional limits should guide our pace.

Longer breaks, she notes, renew our depleted reserves in ways short breaks cannot. They allow big‑picture reassessment and insights that can permanently shift our course. She includes examples such as France’s philosophical approach to work and time off, and highlights research showing that the sense of control we have over our time off predicts how contented we feel afterward.

Elizabeth also addresses workplace culture — how team norms determine whether people receive support when they’re reaching their limits or whether they burn out. She makes it clear that individual wellness tools cannot overcome entrenched collective dysfunction; cultures need mutual trust, support, and built‑in “social shock absorbers.”

Finally, she tackles the systemic barriers to pacing. Many people feel their work realities make slow‑life practices impossible, and frantic rhythms feel inescapable. Elizabeth encourages readers to redefine where they want to end up rather than letting productivity culture dictate their course. We can model recovery, reflection, and intentional planning before jumping back into output. She closes with a powerful reminder that pacing requires courage and “a refusal to sacrifice our lives and principles on the altars of productivity, dominance, and self‑promotion.”

I highly recommend this book for anyone tired of constant striving, break‑neck speed, and the toll it takes on the body, mind, and relationships. It’s a thoughtful, research‑rich guide to reclaiming a sustainable, meaningful rhythm of life.

[Kellie Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book for anyone who struggles to keep up with the pace of life in our current culture. Be aware- it is more of an immersive story than a how-to guide. Slow down and enjoy the journey. Take it in.

It is no secret that many people burn out as they strive to succeed. In this book, Svoboda indicates our problem is that we don’t connect daily decisions with long-term consequences. From the beginning, she uses sports and athletics to illustrate many of her points. Elite athletes set a better example of a sensibly paced life than most of our modern day, always on, culture.

In the introduction she sets the stage, indicating the book is loosely structured in three parts like a long-distance race- research on default pacing habits and how to define your course, how to pace and respond to the body’s feedback, and making a life-long commitment. After reading the book, I agree the structure is “loose.” The book includes a mix of story and advice. The stories about athletes contrast well with stories of burned-out professionals. She includes stories about her experiments with self-discovery and pacing practices, which is where most of the advice appears.

Initially, the loose structure of the book distracted me. I expected the typical problem and solution format. But I later realized the structure of the book allowed me to absorb the vibe of the message without learning a prescribed one-size-fits-all plan.

There are many books that address the problems of hustle culture and non-stop work. There are some familiar themes in this book- the concepts of periodization, flow, and taking a sabbatical or break. This book is worthwhile because it includes novel topics and allowed me to slow down and consider innovative approaches. Svoboda describes Ben Roger’s approach of personal storytelling through telling our life as the hero’s journey, including eight writing prompts. The story pulls us out of the day-to-day grind.

I like the concept of “rigid flexibility”—aligning actions with long-term intention but flexing in the moment based on circumstances. I used the concept within a day of reading it!

My favorite chapter in the book is “Collective Pacing.” We can practice all the individual strategies, but we exist in a culture. If culture does not change, we will continue to struggle with pacing our lives. I strongly agree that culture change is not a quick fix or wellness program. As much as I love yoga, corporate yoga breaks are not the solution! Svoboda describes the work of two individuals, Daryl Appleton and Leah Weiss, with slightly different approaches to creating a culture of trust within organizations. Both approaches involve work, attention, upper-level buy-in, collaboration, and hard conversations. This work is part of the life-long commitment to the distance race.

[Bonnie Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many years now, I have been reviewing fiction. Recently, I have had the opportunity to review non-fiction books and have found it a challenging endeavor. Not only is there a need to restructure my reviewing process, but I have also realized how much I enjoy this new niche.
I was four chapters into The Art of Pacing before I realized that reading this book cover to cover wouldn’t work for me this time. I skimmed over the remaining chapters, taking notes and figuring out the best way to proceed. I decided that I was loving this book so much and wanted to incorporate the ideas of pacing into my own life. Reading this book would take a different strategy, so I have spent several days figuring out how to read it and even more time figuring out how to structure this review.
I love the idea of pacing. Even though I am in my retirement years, I struggle with multiple hobbies and interests as well as a part-time job, and interacting with a large extended family scattered all over the country. I often spend my days feeling like I’ll never get my work done, and I need to add more joy and rest to my life. Pacing is a new concept for me and one I believe I can use to enrich my life.
First, I must say that I find Elizabeth Svoboda’s writing to be well-structured and a pleasure to read. I decided to go back through the chapters I have read, trying to find a way to apply their principles to my life and develop a plan to glean what I can from the content. Instead of just getting through the chapter, I now have a plan to focus on a chapter a month and work to incorporate it into my daily life. Sometimes this might mean I masticate over a few sentences every day.
Some chapters resonate more than others. I have never been a runner or equated pacing with exercise, but I can identify with ways to use that type of pacing with other areas of my life. Other chapters are easier for me to identify with, such as using the Hero’s Journey archetype to plot a narrative arc.
I was trying to focus on some chapters that resonated with me and would allow me to elaborate on what I expect to gain from getting into them further. However, each one seems to have something special to offer as I delve into them, one by one, month by month, in the future. I have a feeling that a year from now, I’ll be looking at this plan as one of the best things I did to enable myself to recalibrate my pace and live a happier life.

[Kenneth S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has participated in long-distance sports understands the importance of pacing. Whether it is distance running, speed skating, or even the long program in figure skating, athletes know they cannot expend all their energy at the beginning. If they do, they risk running out of strength before the end. Pacing is not simply a technical matter; it is a matter of endurance, judgment, and sustainability.

Yet when it comes to managing our lives, pacing does not always enter the conversation. That is why The Art of Pacing by Elizabeth Svoboda feels especially timely. In many countries, we live within a culture of achievement and competition. To achieve, we are often told, we must compete, outperform others, work harder, and stay longer. I grew up believing that being the first to arrive at work and the last to go home was a badge of honor. It seemed to embody commitment, ambition, and seriousness.

But life is not a 100-meter dash or a 500-meter speed-skating sprint. Life is a long-distance event. If we are going to flourish over time, we need to find a resonant pace—one that allows us to remain energized, engaged, and purposeful for the long run. Without such pacing, we risk burnout, exhaustion, and even a deep sense of disorientation. The midlife crisis that some people experience may, in part, be the result of years spent living at a non-resonant pace. It is the consequence of ignoring the importance of pacing until the body, mind, or spirit finally demands attention.

Another valuable idea in Svoboda’s book is the concept of “brief candles.” How often do we experience moments in life when a brief encounter, conversation, insight, or event suddenly kindles a deeper understanding? These moments may be short, but they can illuminate the path ahead. We should remain open to such experiences and receptive when they appear. Sometimes a small moment can offer light far beyond its size.

Overall, Svoboda’s book is an essential read for today’s fast-paced world, where fast food, microwave meals, productivity, and artificial intelligence often push us toward fast pace and efficiency. But fast is not always the same as wisdom. We need to slow down enough to appreciate the path we are walking and the life we are actually living. Otherwise, we may move quickly through life without fully experiencing it.

[Jeff Loesch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't sprint. Don't stall. Learn your pace.

In a world obsessed with constant productivity, "The Art of Pacing" offers a vital roadmap for finding a life rhythm that avoids both burnout and complete withdrawal. Thea author defines pacing as “a commitment to seeing things as they are and changing course when socially sanctioned tempos no longer suffice. Everything is subject to movement and negotiation, and it’s that negotiation that allows for life-long flourishing.” Ultimately, this book teaches readers to manage their energy rather than just their time—a message that couldn't be more perfect for today's hectic work and social culture.

It is an essential read for anyone struggling with a relentless pace of life, as well as those who have begun to retreat and isolate themselves from overwhelm.

KEY THEMES AND INSIGHTS

The author supports her core thesis through engaging, first-hand accounts that explore a variety of interconnected subjects:
* Digital Triage & Breaks: Practical strategies for reshaping your lifestyle and tuning your daily energy, starting with how you consume digital media.
* Flow and Flexibility: Learning how to bend without breaking when life demands shift.
* Re-Storying: One of the book's most powerful concepts. The author introduces the "Hero’s Journey" framework as a method to retell and reshape your personal narrative. By changing how you view your past and present, you gain the motivation needed to reset your pace for the years ahead.

FINAL VERDICT

"The Art of Pacing" is highly relatable, a quick read, and packed with actionable ideas that apply to almost anyone. As someone who has just entered the next phase of life—retirement—I am excited to begin leveraging these concepts, starting immediately with re-storying.

Whether you are a professional, a parent, or simply someone feeling overwhelmed by the non-stop momentum of modern life, this book is a must-read!

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In one of Jerry Weinberg’s Secrets of Consulting books, he talks about the “airplane mask” practice, which is to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. Simple in concept but hard to do for a variety of reasons, most relating to external and internal expectations. The Art of Pacing is a guide to pacing yourself so you can help yourself and others by ensuring you get the time you need to recover and recharge. The things that get in the way of pacing can come from many sources, including work expectations (external or self-imposed), volunteer commitments, and even social media — either the desire to stay engaged or the desire to “keep up” with others. Svoboda explains how an achievement culture can lead to less getting done in the short term, and physical problems in the long term.

Each chapter covers an aspect of pacing, often starting with one or more stories about how someone found a way to pace themselves. Svoboda weaves in science to explain why pacing is beneficial, and how you can apply the tactics of the protagonists in each chapter. The chapters are, appropriately, well-paced and engaging, covering people with a range of experiences.

The themes in the book relate to ideas about purpose in Tom Rath’s What's the Point? Turning Purpose Into Your Daily Superpower, though while purpose can help you make decisions to establish a sustainable pace, there is much you can do otherwise as well.

If you’ve felt like you’ve found taking time for a much-needed breath a challenge, and are looking for information, motivation, and guidance to help you find a pace that keeps you feeling fulfilled, energized, and... well, happy while still contributing to the others in your work and home life, The Art of Pacing is worth a read.

[Joseph Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most difficult thing about this book was trying to apply the lessons to the reading of the book - I didn't want to put it down nor slow down my reading. Svoboda does a remarkable job of navigating the topic of pacing as it applies to many aspects of our lives, and highlighting the importance of intentionality on this topic. I learned a lot throughout this book, and have began to rethink my relationship with my schedule, the demands on my time, and just how much I should aim to accomplish in a given time span. This book has a lot of actionable steps that are easy to incorporate into your life if you are willing to lean into the idea of slowing down, and creates many great reasons for doing so. As someone with a demanding job and three little people at home, I often struggle with finding the time or resources to do it all, and often find myself feeling as though there "just isn't enough time." After reading and digesting this book, I have really started to reframe my relationship with what takes up so much time and space in my world, and am working to make many of the changes the author presents. As I was finishing up the book this morning, I was struck by a quote Svoboda put in the final pages; "to figure out how to make a contribution to the world that feels both authentic and well within your human limits," as essayist Rosie Spinks writes, "to participate in an energetic exchange that isn't predicated on burnout or ceaseless expectation of more" really resonated with me, and is a great way to summarize the impact of this book. I would recommend this book for anyone that feels they are stretched too thin, that is struggling with keeping up, or that wants to cultivate a different relationship with your schedules and time. In thinking through the real value of this work, I can't help but think about how the learning offered here can help me reconcile my motivation to have a healthier and more impactful connection with my work, my family and myself.

[Kathy De Figueiredo · Rating 5 out of 5]

In high school and college I swam through illness because missing practice felt like the one unforgivable thing. Stood on the pool deck sick, shivering before I even hit the water. Dove in anyway. Nobody made me do that. I made me
I've spent years since studying polarity thinking: activity and rest, ambition and contentment, opposing forces that aren't enemies but partners, where the tension between them is where the power lives. I once wrote out my own deepest fear in a coaching exercise: that I'd either chase achievement to prove my worth, or give up and shrink to avoid risk. I didn't expect a book to name that fear back to me so precisely, but Elizabeth Svoboda does.

The Art of Pacing doesn't just tell you to slow down. It builds its case the way a good coach does: story first, instruction second. Early on, she has you work through a hero's journey exercise, not to catalog your wins, but to find the meaning and purpose running through your life, setbacks included. Once you can see that story clearly, pacing stops being about willpower and starts being informed by what the story is actually for. Every chapter after follows that same rhythm: a specific person, a specific moment, then exact steps to try it yourself. Not "breathe more," but your own resonance breathing pace. Not "manage your time," but noticing when your energy actually peaks and protecting it.

Her idea of "brief candles," brief moments of full attention, made the case that you don't have to burn all the way down to matter. This is the same activity-and-rest tension I've spent years mapping in my own life, just given new language and hard science. This is the book I wish someone had handed my former self on that pool deck.
Pacing isn't retreat. It's how you stay in the race long enough for any of it to matter.

[Shivani P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Svoboda's The Art of Pacing reframes the burnout problem we mischaracterize as dedication: constant urgency is panic. For people pleasers and workaholics caught between loving their work and approaching collapse, this book offers a practical antidote: pacing.

I appreciated her kicking off the book on the activity of the ‘hero’s journey’ to help us clarify our purpose and meaning before moving forward. Her strategies on disciplined micro breaks, following the natural ebbs of our energy as much as possible and breathing exercises to ease ourselves into a calmer state before making decisions were great reminders for me.

My favorite chapter was on ‘selfless pacing’. While many authors encourage compassion, and sacrifice, obviously great things! Svoboda addresses the flip side: when people pleasers take helping too far and burn out.

Selfless pacing means engaging in work that's both meaningful and aligned with your distinctive strengths. The key questions: Which tasks am I most prepared to tackle? Which ones are others better equipped for? Do I feel resentment about this? Then, let it go!

I also loved the concept of selective mediocrity: fulfill basic requirements on non-critical tasks and stop there. This frees capacity for work that truly matters.

I felt like Svoboda offered me permission to be human: work hard, pursue excellence, but do so in rhythm with your actual energy, not in defiance of it. She urges me to remember that excellence and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. You absolutely need sustainability to deliver excellence. The people who do their best work are often those who have learned to pace themselves.

The Art of Pacing is an essential guide for perfectionists trying to succeed without sacrificing wellbeing. Highly recommended.

[EVB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book helped me to slow down, examine the speed at which I’ve been living, and assess where I am now, where I want to be, and what steps I need to get there. The author presents numerous examples of people who have reached a point in their lives where their current situation is no longer sustainable, thus prompting a reset, a retreat and/or a re-evaluation. She includes many of her own life’s examples in which she is forced to confront the reality of her fast-paced, hurried life. The inclusion of her encounters makes her more relatable, since I could identify with many of the situations she describes.

One of the most valuable parts of the book involves the impact a grueling pace can have on your health. Often, many of us are unaware of the stressful pace we’re operating. We have been conditioned to accept this lifestyle as normal or expected. The author provides a number of ways to re-calibrate such as rewriting your story, practicing modulation, finding your flow, being a light for others, and taking restorative breaks. In addition, each chapter provides tools, resources, and questions which will help the reader to examine how they can better flourish, contribute and have a greater impact in the long run.

The book includes several pacing templates which are helpful in situations where you need to course correct. These will be a valuable resource for me in the future, when I encounter a challenge, become stressed, or face uncertainty. It is my hope that reading this book will help me to be better equipped to live a a deeper, more meaningful and engaged life!

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

For much of my life, I moved at what Elizabeth Svoboda would call a breakneck pace. I was always chasing the next goal, the next achievement, the next milestone. I didn’t take the time to appreciate where I was or celebrate what I had accomplished.

What resonated most deeply about The Art of Pacing was its description of how that drive can eventually shift from achievement toward meaning. As I've gotten older, I ask different questions. Less "What's next?" and more "What matters?" The book gave language to a transition I've been experiencing for years. I have moved from a life organized around accomplishment to one organized around contribution and purpose.

Another idea that stayed with me was the distinction between constantly doing and intentionally being. As someone who spent years giving every task the same level of intensity, I especially appreciated Svoboda’s discussion of selective mediocrity. The reminder that some things only need to be good enough felt like a permission slip I needed to hear (although my mom has been telling me this for years). Saving my energy for meaningful work, while allowing routine tasks to remain routine, has been important lessons to create a more sustainable pace for life and work.

The Art of Pacing is a book about choosing the right pace for the moment and making thoughtful adjustments along the way. For me, it served as both a mirror and a guide. Its focus on meaningful work and creative contribution feels especially relevant in a culture that celebrates constant acceleration. I definitely enjoyed the book.

[Bev Hutney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hustle Culture R.I.P.

I've been reading in the behavioral genre for decades, so I was thrilled to find The Art of Pacing packed with ideas I hadn't come across before. Svoboda’s core argument is to adopt multiple pace registers—not just full steam ahead—and connect your daily habits to long-term outcomes.

I spent 30+ years forging ahead at all costs, white-knuckling through mental health challenges and life crises along the way, and now, at 62, it's taken four years to fully recalibrate my body after decades of overuse. Yes, I've studied slow productivity, meditation, mindfulness, and the like — yet those interventions feel temporary and are hard to apply in the moment.

If you're a frazzled parent, a worker on the corporate treadmill, or in transition later in life, you'll find Svoboda's perspective fresh, thoughtful, and easy to use to carve out sanity and good health. She reminds us of the futility of pushing too hard and too fast at the wrong times — pacing, I believe, will only matter more as our world accelerates.

The Art of Pacing offers a handful of interventions for issues such as hormone imbalances and physical resilience. But the idea that earned the book for me was how to suss out the elements of a flow state and inject them into your daily grind to produce moments of restoration. I'm already using it. If your curiosity is piqued, buy this book for the flow-state chapters alone.

[Martina Wellik · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Art of Pacing by Elizabeth Svoboda was a refreshing and thought-provoking read. It made me more aware of some of my own habits and behaviors—many shaped by an always-on, achievement-driven culture that can leave us feeling either burned out or strangely unfulfilled while trying to balance work and family life.

Drawing lessons from elite endurance athletes and long-distance runners, Svoboda makes a compelling case for adopting a more sustainable pace in our everyday lives. Rather than offering quick fixes, she provides practical methods and tools to help readers reflect on the pace they've maintained for much of their lives, understand why they developed those patterns, and gradually build a healthier, more balanced approach to work and life.

I particularly appreciated the actionable exercises, such as assessing your baseline stress and energy levels throughout the day and using those insights to schedule demanding work and restorative breaks more intentionally. The chapter on digital pacing offered a thoughtful perspective on creating healthier technology habits without requiring a complete social media detox or falling into the trap of endless scrolling.

Overall, I very much enjoyed The Art of Pacing. It's an insightful, practical book with strategies that are realistic, easy to implement, and highly relevant for anyone looking to improve their well-being without sacrificing ambition.

[Dennis M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Art of Pacing, Elizabeth Svoboda makes a compelling case for slowing down before life forces us to. Through research and relatable stories, she explores how pacing can help us manage the constant pressure to do more, be more, and meet unrealistic demands at the expense of our mental and physical health. Rather than presenting pacing as a single solution, Svoboda offers a range of strategies, from small in-the-moment practices for managing overwhelm to larger life changes that help people step back and regain control.

One of the book’s most useful ideas is reflective storytelling, which invites readers to reframe their own experiences and clarify why pacing matters to them. By identifying personal challenges, strengths, and sources of resilience, readers can build the confidence to make more courageous choices when life becomes demanding.

What I appreciated most was the book’s practicality. Its strategies can benefit anyone moving at a breakneck pace while still questioning the impact they are making. As someone who struggles to fully unplug from work, I found the book encouraging and grounding. I would recommend The Art of Pacing to anyone nearing burnout or feeling worn down by life’s demands. It is a thoughtful resource for reclaiming balance, protecting energy, and making room for a healthier way to work and live.

[Lorna Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning to run your own race

The premise is one most of us recognize immediately: we're taught to sprint or to quit, and nobody ever teaches the wide middle ground in between. Svoboda borrows from distance runners, who deliberately vary their effort across a race, to argue that the same skill applies to work and life. It's a good reframe, and it landed for me as something more useful than another "optimize everything" productivity book.

What stuck with me most was the idea of proactive modulation. Most of us wait until we're flattened before we change anything, and by then recovery takes far longer than the shift would have. Svoboda's case for making small adjustments before you hit that wall, rather than after, feels obvious once it's said out loud and completely absent from how most workplaces actually operate.

I also liked "brief candles," the idea that meaningful impact doesn't need a big block of time, just a few minutes of real attention. It's a useful corrective for anyone who equates being generous with being depleted.

The book leans more toward story and research than a tight step-by-step framework, which suits me fine, but if you want bullet-pointed takeaways per chapter, it may feel looser than expected.

A genuinely useful reframe on energy over time, even if you have to do some of the extracting yourself.

[Adam Beltz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Art of Pacing is a very good book that I found to be a wonderful blend of storytelling, research and practical tips.

The problem is a culture that glorifies a punishing pace, as if “speed and cachet” are desirable ends, in and of themselves. This book ultimately provides guidance on how to manage the space between burnout and dropping out, while working toward some common good.

As a lifer in the hyper-pacing world (somewhat recovering), I was generally familiar with most of the topics and potential prescriptions Svoboda discusses. However, I was still very engaged in reading every chapter. There are so many “aha” moments throughout that I still learned a ton. The most poignant message for me, “Unchecked striving becomes especially perilous when it’s done in the name of self-elevation. People whose chief goal is winning often feel depleted, not just because they have little sense of what their lives stand for beyond triumph but also because they’re perpetually unsure of their worth.”

This is a book I will share with many people, because it will resonate with anyone who has occasionally burnt the candle at both ends. This is also a book I will always keep handy because it is a very practical guide and grounding post.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author explores how the pace at which we live, work, and interact with the world influences our overall well-being. One idea that particularly resonated with me was her encouragement to become more aware of our own natural rhythms. She also offers thoughtful cautions about the effects of excessive social media use, explaining how it can diminish our attention span, weaken long-term memory, and disconnect us from the world around us. Rather than suggesting we abandon digital tools altogether, she advocates using them intentionally so they enrich our lives instead of distracting us from them.

Another concept that stayed with me was her discussion of activities that genuinely engage and energize us. She explores the idea of the flow state—that deeply focused experience where time seems to disappear and creativity comes more naturally. What especially captured my attention was her suggestion that we can intentionally create more opportunities to experience this state. It left me feeling inspired to pay closer attention to the conditions that help me enter a state of flow and to intentionally cultivate more of those moments in my everyday life.

[J Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting ideas, but I wanted clearer takeaways

I received an advance reader copy through the First Look Book Club. Thanks to the publisher and the club for the opportunity to read it early. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed The Art of Pacing more than I loved it. The central idea really resonated with me: success isn’t always about pushing harder, it’s about finding the right pace for different situations and seasons of life. There were several ideas that made me stop and think, and I highlighted quite a few passages along the way.

What kept this from being a higher-rated read was the structure. Many of the strongest insights were woven into long stories and examples, and I found myself wishing each chapter ended with a short summary or a few practical takeaways. I think that would have made the ideas easier to remember and apply.

Overall, I’m glad I read it. It gave me a different perspective on managing my time and energy, even if it wasn’t a book I’ll come back to often. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy psychology, performance, and personal development, especially if you prefer books that explore ideas through stories rather than step-by-step frameworks.

[Rick Janiszewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pacing isn't just for runners. With the right pace in your life, the sky's the limit!

The Art of Pacing by Elizabeth Svoboda was a great read. I loved the distance running analogy—thinking about pacing your life the way a marathon runner paces a race just made so much sense. The book explores the space between breakneck speed and complete inactivity, offering a refreshing perspective on how we spend our energy.
The concept of energy management versus time management has already changed the way I'm thinking about each day.
My favorite idea, though, was the concept of "brief candles"—those short interactions or encounters that have the power to change not only someone else's life, but your own. As I reflected on the book, I realized I've experienced brief candle moments in the past. My biggest takeaway, however, is that I'm now more aware of the opportunities to create those moments in everyday life—and more willing to step into them when they appear.
This is a thoughtful, practical book that gave me a new way to think about how I live, work, and connect with others. I highly recommend it.

[Christine Jasinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Art of Pacing is a realistic dive into the benefits and techniques of pacing, often told in connection to approaches from marathon runners. Ms. Svoboda weaves research, storytelling, and her experiences in attempts to modulate her own pace to engage the reader in thoughtful reflection to understand where there are opportunities, benefits, and necessities in pacing. I particularly appreciated the themes that different paces meet different seasons and stages. Attempts to slow down are not required to be all or nothing as much as an all-out sprint with no finish line ought to be. The anecdotes from Tricia Hersey reflecting on her grandmother's cat naps to recharge helps to illustrate not only realism in recharging, but challenges what many assume needs to be optimal rest periods to benefit at all (though stringing together periods of deep or extended rest bring their own benefit). In a world often clamoring for more, better, faster, this book asks the reader to consider what is good enough, what you are racing toward, and in service of whom. With those answers, the follow-up question is how modulation of pace might yield better results in those pursuits.

[Sandee Priser · Rating 4 out of 5]

We understand that elite athletes need to balance rest and exertion. Yet we seem to think that doesn't apply to those of us who are regular people struggling in the grind culture with regular jobs.

 

Svoboda gently guides reminds us that not only can we pace ourselves, but it is imperative for us to do so before we finally crash and it is harder to bounce back. She provides a variety of ways for us to pace ourselves, punctuated by stories of those who have been successful and how they made pacing work. She also explains the things she has been trying personally, which adds an additional touch of reality.

 

I can't say that all of the areas discussed will work for me. But that is the point -- we are each in our own lives and cycles so what works for some may not work for all. But I will definitely be creating "brief candles" and working on flow.

 

The book has a light tone and is fast paced, yet manages to pack in a lot of information to make this a quick weekend read or however you find time to start to think about how you will pace yourself.