Call it the time paradox: Empirically, people are working less, but feeling more overworked. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average work week at 34.5 hours. The number of hours Americans work yearly has fallen from about 1,900 in the 1950s to about 1,700 now.

And yet people are always talking about how overworked they feel. A recent poll by PGi (a maker of meeting and collaboration technology) found that 88% of respondents claimed to work more than 40 hours a week. A recent poll by Seamless (the online food delivery company) found that 48% of respondents claimed to work nights and weekends some or all of the time.