The best reason to take your time is that this time is the only time you’ll ever have.  You must take it, or it will be taken from you.  It is telling that the phrase "take your time" is synonymous with slowing down.  If we want to live life fully, we do best to slow down.  I don’t suggest that we turn back the clock, trying to retrieve a bygone era when life was slower.  We couldn’t, even if we wanted to.  But I don’t believe we should want to.  We should revel in our electronically supercharged, unbounded world.  But, to make the most of of this new world, to avoid feeling overbooked, overstretched, and about to snap, to make modern life become better than life has ever been, a person must learn how to do what matters most first.  Otherwise you will bulldoze over life’s best moments.  You won’t notice the little charms that adorn each day, nor will you ever transform the mundane into the extraordinary.

Excerpted from Crazybusy, by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.