Suddenly I realized that there are all kinds of ways to articulate and live a wide-ranging life of prayer. You write that today the primary rule of work is to cram as much into the hours of the days as you can. We all let work eat us alive. In our culture work takes all our energy. It's the way we come to value ourselves and measure success.
Society overvalues work to the detriment of other values like prayer, rest, community.
But there's another way. I would when I was 12 or 13. It took me about 30 years to get the courage and wisdom to actually try it. Not everybody should be a writer, of course. But whatever the profession, it seems to me that you can live in a way that lets who you are drive how you spend your time and energy, as opposed to what you do.