Why "Me Time" Is a Must

Pico Iyer, author of The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, is fascinated by a new field of study called interruption science. "They found it takes the average human being almost 25 minutes to recover from a phone call, but the average human being gets an interruption every 11 minutes now. So we're never caught up," he says. "I've realized the big luxury for so many people now is just a little blank space in the calendar every day where you collect yourself."

That time each day doesn't have to be meditation, a practice Pico admits that he's "a bit too lazy" to do. Simple things, like turning off the radio in the car, can be effective as well. "When I'm waiting for my wife to come home from work, and I don't know if it will be one or two hours, I used to scroll through my emails, and then I thought, 'Just turn off all the lights and listen to some music,'" he says. "I noticed I was so much fresher when I heard her footsteps on the stairs and said hello. I slept better. I woke up better. So just tiny, everyday things just to clear some space in one's head and one's mind."

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