Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience*

The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept "time work," which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic induction yielded five themes: in descending order of prevalence, the subjects reported efforts to control or manipulate duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation. The variety and prevalence of time work suggests the sovereignty of self-determination; for the most part, however, time work contributes to cultural reproduction. From the beginnings of social psychology, it has been an article of faith that the self