Time has become a scarce commodity. Everyone wants more of it. The refrain 'If only I had more time!' echoes around the offices, kitchens and bedrooms of Britain; 'hurry sickness' is becoming the malaise of the new millennium. All over the world, people are working longer hours, struggling to fit more and more into every day. Symptoms include jabbing the 'door close' button on lift doors to save the two to four seconds required for the door to do it on its own, and an inability to do one thing at a time, so that every journey is a phone call opportunity.

Technology is helping to speed up the world: laptops, mobile phones (with a hands- free set so that you can do something else at the same time), pagers, remote controls. We live in an instant, insistent world. Adverts for energy-boosting drinks read: 'Having trouble keeping up with yourself?' We yearn for the lazy afternoons and days of yesteryear - but enthusiastically sign up for email, messaging services, language classes. Even time management courses. The result is parents with a lack of quality time to spend with their children, and surveys showing that working couples see less of each other than ever before and that rows over time spent on domestic labour or childcare top the list of marital discord. The idea of doing nothing has become terrifying, a sure sign of worthlessness.

Like any commodity that is scarce, time has become a battleground. In what is supposed to be the world of the consumer, firms steal time from customers. It is now perfectly acceptable to be asked to hold the instant the phone is answered. This saves the company time and money, but costs you time. We are engaged in a constant, subtle war over time. If the politics of class dominated the last century, the politics of time could dominate this one.

Of course, there is a class dimension to the rush culture. One of the biggest transitions of the past few decades has been to take the previous relationship between time and status - the rich had lots of time, the poor very little - and reverse it. While bankers in the City are now at their desks at 7am, in the good old days 'bankers' hours' meant 10am till 4pm with a decent lunch break. Moreover, to be seen to have time to spare is a sign of low status: arranging lunch, it is never done to be available too soon. Similarly, being late is moving from a sign of rudeness to a sign of status.

A two-tier time society is being built, with the money-rich, time-poor on one side, and the money-poor, time-rich on the other. The rich are working longer and longer hours in order to compete with each other. At the same time, they are employing others - cleaners, childminders, fast-food restaurant workers - in order to allow themselves to work all the time. Meanwhile, more and more of us are putting ourselves on the treadmill of constant activity, taking on an increasingly heavy workload, and never stopping for a moment to ask ourselves why.

(Adapted from Clockwise Advanced by Jon Naunton)