Speed check

There’s nothing quite like a stint in hospital to throw up a few questions about life and where it’s headed. Hooked up to a monitor in the emergency department with my heart in overdrive, I realised I’d been pushing myself too hard and needed to make some adjustments.

It’s a common theme of modern life: rushing to keep up, racing against the clock, running out of puff and falling in a heap, only to discover you just don’t know how to live any other way.

Do you live fast or slow? We can think fast and slow, using our automatic, subconscious or by making more reasoned choices. Some people are born multi-taskers, but that approach doesn’t work for everyone.

We can also exercise fast or slow depending on our muscle twitch fibres.

Olympic sprinters have been shown to possess about 80 per cent fast twitch fibres, while marathon runners tend to have 80 per cent slow twitch fibres, for example.