ABSTRACT
Recent data suggest that the average U.S. worker worked 175 more hours in the year 2000 than he or she worked in 1979 (Schor, 2003, citing data from the International Labor Organization).1 In addition, there is some evidence to suggest that workers, especially professional and managerial workers in the United States, perceive that they are busier than they used to be (Milliken, Beunza, & Dunn-Jensen, 2001). Not surprisingly, according to a Wall Street Journal survey, “75% of those earning more than $100,000 a year…say managing their time is a bigger problem than managing their money” (March 8, 1996, R1). In her research on engineers at a hi-tech company, Leslie Perlow (1999) concluded that many of the workers were increasingly operating in what she called a “time famine” which she defined as “a feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it” (p. 57).
