The Art of Pacing

Virtual livestream

Elizabeth Svoboda will be joined in conversation by author Sejal Shah

A guide to balancing hustle and leisure so you can make meaningful progress on what matters most, without burning out. 

Many of us struggle to live a well-paced life and find ourselves perpetually oscillating between two extremes: intense effort and lethargy. At one extreme, we jump headfirst into big, critical projects, only to end up burned out. At the other extreme, we get sucked into black holes of social media scrolling and Netflix binging and fall far behind on our goals.

Science writer Elizabeth Svoboda’s The Art of Pacing explores how navigating the full range of the pace spectrum, not just the furthest ends, can transform the way you reach your goals. Blending memoir, cutting-edge psychology research, and interviews with Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs, Svoboda artfully uncovers the nuances of pacing so you can effectively balance ambition and rest, making subtle pace adjustments with ease.

Elizabeth Svoboda is an award-winning science writer who’s contributed to Scientific American, the Boston Globe, Discover, Psychology Today, Aeon and the New York Times. Her work has also appeared in the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. She is the author of What Makes a Hero?: The Surprising Science of Selflessness, as well as The Life Heroic, for kids. Her most recent book, from Simon & Schuster, is The Art of Pacing — a scientific and contemplative look at how to pace ourselves in different domains of life. She grew up in Rochester and now lives in San Jose, California.

A writer whose work crosses genres and disciplines, Sejal Shah is the author of the award-winning essay collection This Is One Way to Dance, an NPR Best Book of the year, and How to Make Your Mother Cry: fictions, a multi-genre collection, which was longlisted for the 2024-2025 Story Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared widely in print and online. Her pedagogy is informed by over 20 years of teaching experience in colleges, MFA programs, and literary workshops. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and residencies or fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, Millay Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2021, she was named an influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News. The daughter of Gujarati parents who immigrated to the United States from India and Kenya, Sejal lives in Rochester, New York.

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The Art of Pacing

This is a live event at Writers and Books and will be Live Streamed.

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