Living: How America Has Run Out of Time

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So the interesting reactions of families and individuals are more daring than simply "dropping out." In 1986 the advertising firm of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles released a poll: If you could have your dream job, it asked, what would it be? The most popular choice among men was to own or manage their own company, followed by being a professional athlete, the head of a large corporation, a forest ranger and a test pilot. The favorite among women? To own and manage their own business, but in their case followed by tour guide, flight attendant, novelist and photographer.

"Running your own business means you are controlling your own destiny," says M.I.T. research director David Birch, who has studied entrepreneurship. While starting a company rarely means more free time, it can promise greater satisfaction, autonomy and flexible working conditions. Freedom-minded men and women alike have recognized that technology and the restructuring of the economy, which so often work against individual peace of mind, can actually work for the small entrepreneur. The same computers and fax machines that torment corporate drudges allow small businesses access to world markets.

Some fast-lane veterans who are fed up with their harried working conditions are trying other escape routes, including climbing down the corporate ladder. Trading in a big salary for a lower-level job with more vacation time, flexible hours, improved maternity or paternity leave, even weekends off may seem a luxury, but it is one that many people are choosing. Dann Pottinger, 42, nephew and grandson of Florida bank presidents, was CEO of Commercial State Bank of Orlando, one of the most profitable independent banks in central Florida. This winter he chaired the search committee to select his replacement. "It is all too time-consuming," he says of his job. Pottinger has spent a total of eight days out of the office in the past year. So he will give up a six-figure salary to go on commission for State Farm Insurance Companies. "I'm not naive enough to say that money doesn't matter," Pottinger says. "But I want my children to know me as something besides their provider."

Such sentiments help explain why the high-draw cities in the U.S. are not the metropolises of New York and Los Angeles but the smaller and more habitable climes of Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Providence and Charlotte, N.C. To many working families, a higher quality of life, and more of it, compensate nicely for the absence of the Metropolitan Opera or the Hollywood Bowl. When Equitable Life Assurance Society summoned Jim Crawford, 43, back to Manhattan from its Des Moines office, he would not relinquish his Iowa life-style. "We based that decision on the quality of the environment," he says. "People do work hard here, and there is a deep appreciation for family life." He traded a higher salary and a two-hour commute for better schools and more free time. "We wonder how we did it, went through the routine," he says now.