There are, on an abstract level, two different types of DBA's and they have have two types of separate pressures. There is the development/QA types that have a timeline pressure to develop, build, alter and improve the code to integrate on the timeline of delivering an application to the end user. They essentially have a planned day, but are under pressure to produce code on a regular basis.

Then there is the production DBA. They are charged with keeping the databases up and running, DB tuning, along with the servers and networks. They are also the ones that the are talking with end-users and support staff when thing go wrong. Their job can be 365 days of checking in that the backups are done, stats were updated, etc. But the production DBA needs to be able to respond immediately because the drive in the SAN unit fried at 12:45 PM EST on the first of the month, and would it be smarter to shutdown SQL while the drive rebuilds? What is your DR plan if Building 1 burns? Those have a pressure as well.

My last company used pretty much nothing but delivered applications, so my production DBA role was pretty much DR and minor troubleshooting. My current company is/was a SW company. They hired me in to troubleshoot our SW errors and hosted DB problems. Within three weeks I was fixing issues in setup by former dev DBA's. 😎

Declaring "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" sounds a little presumptuous to me.