Many U.S. experts agree faster computers, always-available phones and e-mail that arrives in a minute instead of a day or a week all contribute to the impatience-causing overload.

So does a culture-wide desire to do it all.

"We've had 24 hours in a day for an awful long time," says Cathy O'Keefe, who teaches leisure theory at the University of South Alabama. "People's brains evolved based on a slower experience of time, but our technology has speeded up the amount of activity and stimulation that our brains are experiencing, and that's why we're having a disconnect."

Scheduling ourselves so that we have little to no down time also is detrimental, says Jan Yager, a Connecticut-based time-management expert and author.

"We're interrupted constantly," she says. "But so much of what we do needs at least an hour of concentrated time."

TIME TO BREATHE

Parents who want to give their kids the best opportunities enroll them in music, dance and martial arts, then rack up miles on their minivans as they ferry them from one lesson to another.

"It's a wonderful byproduct of an affluent society to be able to have these choices," O'Keefe says. "On the other hand, there are only 24 hours in a day, and if you decide to take your child to ballet or tae kwon do and other sports and everything else, then something has to be eliminated."

Cheryl Brown of Bannister, Mich., actually took a week off of her job as a medical transcriptionist just to get caught up. She and daughter Allison, 13, squeezed a trip to the mall into their schedule.

"There aren't enough hours in the day," Brown says. "I feel like I'm always running."

When she's particularly stressed, she admits she loses her temper faster. One solution: She takes advantage of the 40-minute commute home from work as time to decompress.

"It's all country roads, so I don't have to deal with traffic," she says. "My down time is my travel time, so by the time I get home, I'm focused on home."

She feels like the dizzying pace is simply a fact of life.

"If families don't connect when they should, that's when it causes problems," she says.

O'Keefe says individuals eventually get tired of being exhausted, angry or impatient, or they'll realize something is missing in their lives. Then they'll try to make a change.

"There is an awakening, and that awakening is a good thing," she says.

Once that happens, a family should sit down together and examine this question: What do we want our family to be like? Together, family members need to make decisions about what will make them happiest: Doing it all or dropping some things.

The key is to take charge instead of going with the flow.

"It's intentionality," O'Keefe says. "Without intentionality, you're either just living by the seat of your pants or by somebody else's forces of energy. That's why a lot of people are unhappy. Because they feel like they've lost their freedom."