We live in an age of instaneity: instant coffee, instant oatmeal, fast-food restaurants, express lanes, just-in-time deliveries, instant replay. We buy jeans that are prewashed, prefaded, even preripped. We punch "door close" buttons in elevators repeatedly, though most provide only the illusion of control: automatic timers actually regulate the door closing. We click the remote control buttons on our televisions so quickly that makers of television shows and commercials now pack ever more images into less time.

"We are in a rush. We are making haste," writes essayist James Gleick in this book, 38 essays on different facets of our hurried and often harried lives. While Gleick's essays demand reflection, they accommodate our penchant for getting our information in small doses: nearly all are under 10 pages.

Got a minute? Consider sleep. We can't sleep faster, but we can sleep less, swapping what we perceive as wasted time for time spent on more compelling activities: watching television, for example. Many of us seem intent on shrinking sleep to its bare minimum. The National Sleep Foundation reported this spring that the typical American adult gets less than 7 hours of sleep per day. That's 75 minutes less than people get in sleep lab studies, when they go to bed only when they feel sleepy and awaken spontaneously.

"The mere presence of an alarm clock," Gleick writes," implies sleep deprivation, and what bedroom lacks an alarm clock?" Our national preoccupation with multitasking pervades the bedroom. Marketers pitch tapes that promise to help us make money or learn languages or lose weight in our sleep.

We have altered not only the amount of time that we sleep but also its timing. One in five Americans toils outside traditional daytime work hours, in the evening, at night, at irregular hours, or on rotating shifts, frequently changing their hours for waking and sleeping. Yet we cannot escape our biology. Humans are designed for daytime activity and nighttime sleep. Flaunting nature's design triggered costly industrial catastrophes including the near meltdown at Three Mile Island and the grounding of the Exxon Valdez.

Many of us repeatedly subject ourselves to a modern malady: jet lag. Our inner rhythms travel far less speedily than the planes that whisk us to distant spots.

Consider the term "real time." In 1980, Gleick reports, the phrase made it into the New York Times only four times. By the end of the century, it showed up daily. The language of real time, he says, is perpetual present tense. Little frustrates us more than three commonly encountered words, "Connection timed out."

Our experience of time, Gleick asserts, changes with our moods, our age, our level of busy-ness, with the complexity of our culture. Complaining about time pressure is a national sport. In truth, whatever the cost, we love living life in the fast track.

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