# The Art of Pacing: Why Slowing Down Is a Long Game Strategy (with Elizabeth Svoboda)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a-productive-conversation-406235/the-art-of-pacing-why-slowing-down-is-a-long-game-strategy-with-elizabeth-svoboda
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/a-productive-conversation-406235/the-art-of-pacing-why-slowing-down-is-a-long-game-strategy-with-elizabeth-svoboda.md
Podcast: [A Productive Conversation](https://stenobird.com/podcast/a-productive-conversation-406235)
Published: 2026-06-19T07:34:00+00:00
Episode link: https://aproductiveconversation.transistor.fm/episodes/elizabeth-svoboda
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/b88a3d71/0758eded.mp3
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Duration seconds: 2450

## Resource

This episode is brought to you by Your Clockwise Week—a personalized weekly structure built around your actual life, not an ideal one. If your week feels full but not fitting, you can learn more at mikevardy.com/yourclockwiseweek . We spend a lot of time talking about how to do more. What we talk about far less — and what might matter far more — is the question of how to pace yourself while you do it. Not as a wellness concept or a vague self-care suggestion, but as a genuine strategy for sustaining quality, avoiding collapse, and staying aligned with what actually matters to you over time. Elizabeth Svoboda is the author of The Art of Pacing: A Guide to Balancing Shorter-Term Demands with Long-Term Thriving , and this conversation covers a lot of ground in the best possible way. Elizabeth is a science journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Psychology Today, and many other publications. Her book grew out of a thirty-year reckoning with her own pacing failures — a culture of maximum output with no equivalent emphasis on what you leave to the side. What she built from that is something both research-grounded and deeply practical. Six Discussion Points Pacing without purpose is just slowing down — knowing where you're headed is what makes a deliberate pace possible at all, and this is where most productivity advice quietly falls apart The difference between racing and pacing is a single letter, but the difference in outcomes compounds over years — top athletes understand this through tapering, and the rest of us are still catching up Burnout is not an event, it's a trajectory — heart rate variability (HRV) tracking and tools like the Maslach Burnout Inventory can help you see the train coming before it hits, shifting you from reactive to proactive Rigid…

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