Honore's In Praise of Slowness has a wonderful introduction to the idea of slow living. It's not about being slow, in the Luddite sense of refusing to get on with life. It's about having the right to set one's own tempo.
Instead he gives a musical analogy. One should live life at a tempo giusto, at the speed that's precisely right. For me that tempo changes from day to day. When I'm in the midst of debugging software, the tempo can be pretty fast, and I stay intensely focused for days. But something happens to me after a while, and I self-regulate back to an easier pace.
One of my excellent friends has been a software manager since the early 1960's. He told me that most of the people he sees think they're running a sprint. They're not. It's a marathon, and you must train and pace yourself accordingly. A very wise physician told me years ago that everyone has elevated blood pressure from time to time. What's bad for you is when the pressure stays high, and the body takes an unremitting beating.
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