Serenity now!

If you're reading these words, chances are you've got something on the stove, or someone on hold, or you're also watching TV. Your BlackBerry has gone off, your cellphone keeps ringing, the kids are calling, your boss needs you.

Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell contends that American society has gone from being merely very busy to ''CrazyBusy," which is the name of his new book. Hallowell, who lives in Arlington, is an expert on attention deficit disorder whose most popular book is ''Driven to Distraction." His new book describes another condition that he believes is epidemic. People are ''crazybusy" with the competing demands of daily life, suffering from information overload and addicted to being wired up. Technology is both a culprit and a cure, he says. Hallowell spoke to the Globe about his new book and his own crazybusy life.

Q. Most of us are far busier than we want to be; we feel we can never catch up, like the hamster on the wheel. How did we get here, and what can we do?

A. The message of the book is not that you shouldn't be busy. It's that you shouldn't be crazybusy, that you can do a lot more these days than people have ever been able to do because of technology. But you want to be sure that you're in charge of it so that it's not in charge of you. If you don't plan, your life will run you. You could spend the better part of the day just turning around voice mail and e-mail.

Q. Tell me about your own schedule for the next week.

A. I'm actually just starting off on a two-week travel tour. Today I go to Washington, then the next day to Atlanta, then the next day to New York, then to Nebraska, Tucson, Cinncinnati, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, and Toronto.

Q. That sounds pretty crazybusy to me. Don't you practice what you preach?

A. I do. What I tell people, and what I do, is to prioritize and get rid of your leeches -- people or projects that wear you out. It's not just your time that you lose -- you lose your energy and enthusiasm and then nothing feels good.

Q. What is technology's role in all of this: good guy or bad?

A. I'm not a Luddite. If you use it right, it's an incredible aid. Your daughter has a cellphone for an emergency on the highway; that's wonderful. But I made up a word in the book, ''pizzled." It's how you feel when you're eating with someone and their phone rings and they answer it. It's a combination of [expletive] off and puzzled. We have to be a lot more in charge of technology instead of just being so enchanted by it.

Q. Tell me about some of your patients who are addicted to technology.

A. The ultimate one is the woman who asked if it's normal that her husband lays his BlackBerry down on the bed next to them when they make love. It's odd that he would do it, but even odder that she would think it might be normal behavior. I have another woman who calls her husband's computer his ''plastic mistress."

Hallowell's cellphone rings, and he puts me on hold. ''Can I call you back in 15 minutes?" he asks.

Fifteen minutes later . . .

Q. You just left me pizzled when you took that other call. Your explanation?

A. A radio show was calling from Atlanta. They couldn't wait because they were going on the air. Normally I never do that. When I'm at lunch with a friend, I never answer my phone. I think it's horribly rude. The exception is if you're expecting a really important call that you have to take. Then you tell your friend ahead of time. Then it's fine. It's like excusing yourself to go to the bathroom.

Q. You've also coined a new term, ''screen sucking," in which people just stay on their computers for hours at a time, wasting time. How do you break that addiction? It seems all of us are addicted at least to e-mail.

A. Screen sucking is when you go online to get your e-mail, and the next thing you know, you've been there for hours. You may be shopping on some site, you may be in a chat room -- the sex sites are the most frequently visited. Then you wonder where your time went. I have a chart in the book where I lay out a structure so that people can review how they spend their time.

Q. Do you consider yourself crazybusy?

A. Not crazy, but busy. I enjoy my life. I get done what needs to get done. I spend time with my wife and kids. I take a month to go to a lake in Connecticut where there is no TV and just an old rotary telephone.

Q. They still exist?

A. Yes, at first I found that phone maddening. Then I thought, here I am at a place where there is no need to hurry at anything and I'm allowing myself to get angry at any old-fashioned telephone. I began to look at that phone as a wise Buddha counseling me instead of [as] an obstacle.

Q. Do you own a BlackBerry?

A. I do not. I tried a Palm Pilot, and it was a disaster. It took too much time to enter things into it, and I ended up losing all the information.

Q. You write that there's no correlation between a fast life and a happy life. Can you explain that?

A. A lot of people get unfairly overlooked because they're not fast. This equating of slow with stupidity is completely inaccurate. Some people who process too fast are glib, facile, and superficial. They don't think deeply or consider things in interesting ways.

Q. Do you really advise people to schedule their lovemaking?

A. If you're happy with your love life, fine. But most people these days that I know say they don't make love as much as they'd like to. So my suggestion is to schedule it.

Q. Doesn't that take the romance out of it all?

A. Think about it. Stimulation is part of the fun. If you know it's going to be 9 o'clock on Tuesday night, you get to look forward to it all day. That's pretty sexy, actually.

Q. Do you schedule your love life?

A. No.