ABSTRACT
This chapter finds supportive evidence of the stress of higher status thesis, with professionals describing their work as a moving platform of ever increasing job demands. It views professionals not simply as exposed and vulnerable to deleterious job conditions, heightening work-family conflicts and chronic time strains, but also as actors engaged in time work, that is, strategies to lessen the negative effects of the stress of higher status on their lives. Two overlapping sets of circumstances contributes to the time strains increasingly reported by contemporary professionals: the career mystique mismatch and the changing temporal organization of work. Two time-work strategies: setting priorities and scaling back on work or personal obligations, reflect traditional ways of managing work and family. Two other strategies: blocking out time and time shifting are both more novel ways of responding to the blurring of work boundaries as work spills over to times and places outside typical work days and work weeks.
