Why must we have a snow day to feel permission to slow down?

Yesterday, we had to slow down. The streets were covered in ice. Schools were closed, university classes were canceled, and workplaces ran abbreviated schedules. People had a rare chance to stop careening through the day. They were able to watch movies, go sledding, make snow angels, and cook meals with friends and family. For most, it was a much calmer day (although if you were inside with restless children, you might not have felt calm).

So why don’t we live this way all the time?

On NBC Nightly News last night, Brian Williams reported that one-third of heart disease is related to stress and chronic working. “If you are old enough,” he said, “you remember a day when, after work, you go home from work and maybe once every six months you would get an after-hours call from work. But for the most part you didn’t think about work until it was time to go back to work the next day. Well, not anymore. Now, work is in your hand, on the screen, staring you in the face and expects an answer at night at 11:00 pm.” The result? Sleeping less. Taking vacations with our laptops by our sides. And the result of that is people are ending up in the emergency room with heart problems, one-third of which are a result of stress.

So how can we set limits?

For me, I have pledged that I will turn off my iPad each night at 7:00 and not turn it on again until the next morning. I don’t need to sit looking at that screen hour after hour. I make it sound like it will be easy for me to do, but it’s not. I love my iPad. I have called it the single greatest material object I have ever owned. I am able to access the New York Times, my Twitter feed, my facebook page, and my email, all in one place. But that’s the danger – the double-edged sword, so to speak. I find myself checking my work email a dozen times. Then I am moving from app to app, playing a video game and checking scores on ESPN Scorecenter. Doing that has become habitual behavior. I mean, come on. I don’t really need to know the score of the Arizona game that many times in an hour, do I?

Think about it. What limits are you willing to set on yourself so that more days become like snow days?