Practising THE PAUSE

In aeroplanes, they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before you help others. This is apt for many women, who are often the linchpins of their families - if something happens to you, the whole thing comes crumbling down. So look after yourself

- LORRAINE KEARNEY

In the past, self-care was an aberration. Functional, productive people simply - got on with the task at hand without complaining. Burnout was for the weak-willed and lazy. Or so the thinking went.

But as technological advances pushed us to work faster, longer and harder, to be more productive, time has become our most precious commodity. We never seem to have enough of it to do what needs to be done on any given day.

Time is money. It may first have been said in 1719 in the periodical The Free-Thinker, yet it has never been as apt as it is in the early 21st century.

'The answer to the question why does it feel like we have no time, or that time is going so fast, has to do with the fact that we aren't paying attention a lot of the time when we are just rushing from one thing to the next,' says Nicci Cloete, mindfulness practitioner, coach and mentor. 'It's a paradox - if you're doing something that you love and you're present, and you are paying close attention to what you're doing, there's often a sense of time slowing down.

This kind of non-stop sprinting has all sorts of consequences, among them hits to your physical, emotional and mental health. Ignoring self-care can lead to a decreased quality of life, impaired functioning and reduced productivity - exactly the opposite of what the modern world wants of us.