Half a century ago, an upholsterer from San Francisco made a curious discovery. He was called to a cardiologist's office to reupholster some chairs in the waiting room. When he looked at the furniture, he wondered immediately what was wrong with the patients. Only the front edge of the seats and the first few inches of the armrests were worn out. "People don't wear out chairs this way," he said.

Five years later, in 1959, Drs. Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman began to put the pieces together. They had noticed an odd pattern shared by many of their cardiac patients, a pattern that centered on a "chronic sense of time urgency." Patients showed irritability at being made to wait in line, had difficulty relaxing, and were anxious over delays. Obsessed with not wasting a moment, they spoke quickly, interrupted often, hurried those around them, and were forever rushing. Hence the waiting room chairs: the patients sat on the edge of their seats, nervously fidgeting at the arms of the chairs as they watched time tick by.

The cardiologists called the new disease "hurry sickness."

According to Friedman, hurry sickness "arises from an insatiable desire to accomplish too much or take part in too many events in the amount of time available." The hurry-sick person is unable to acknowledge that he can do only a finite number of things. "As a consequence, he never ceases trying to 'stuff' more and more events in his constantly shrinking reserves of time."