just-in-time lifestyle

n.

A modern lifestyle in which people expend only the minimum effort to complete a task and rush from one appointment to another.

Example Citations:

Leslie Charles, a corporate consultant and author of Why Is Everyone So Cranky? (Hyperion) speculates that more people are running late because of "just-in-time lifestyles."

"They make plans to get there just in time and something happens."

— Justin Thomas and John Head, "I'm late! I'm late!," The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario), July 26, 2001

The Green Party's recent PPB for the Euro elections played beautifully with these tensions. It used all the technologies of a just-in-time lifestyle (laptops, mobile phones, screaming cars) to deliver long-term messages — about how we should slow down, maintain our human measure, think about sustainability rather than quick thrills.

— Pat Kane, "Thinking past the mental barrier of the millennium," The Sunday Herald, June 6, 1999

Earliest Citation:

White collar workers are living a "just-in-time lifestyle," bred by the constant pressures of new technology and increased demands to do more with less time and fewer resources, a new international survey says.

These employees have stretched the just-in-time manufacturing approach — intended to cut the costs of sitting on expensive inventory — to cover their business and personal lives, says the study by Priority Learning and Consulting group, a global firm.

— Ijeoma Ross, "Just-in-time approach creeps into personal lives," The Globe and Mail, January 5, 1998

Related Words:

door dwell

interrupt-driven

just-in-time learning

just-in-time politics

lifehack

lifestyle fitness

self-interrupt

Category:

Lifestyles