I used to equate a packed calendar with a full life. My days were booked up, well ahead of time, for dinners out, pub quizzes, exercise classes, trips to the cinema – activities that I knew to be beneficial or rewarding.
I had been determined to make work less central to my life: I couldn’t burn out when I had so much else going on, I reasoned. But when the time came to follow through on my plans, I tended to find that I had been overly optimistic – not only about how much it was possible to squeeze into a day, but also about my enthusiasm to do so.
