Scaling back your lifestyle doesn't require a vow of poverty, but it does take a bit of thinking — about what really matters to you.

Frazzled by your schedule? Overwhelmed by your commitments, your to-do list, your commute? Tired of being always on, thanks to your cell phone and your Blackberry? Do you find you never have enough time for family or friends, let alone to dig into that latest bestseller or indulge in a hobby?

You have plenty of company. Americans are putting in, on average, 200 more work hours per year — that amounts to five 40-hour work weeks — now than in 1973. We have the longest work week of any industrialized nation. And an astounding one in three Americans describe themselves as chronically overworked.

The phenomenon of our overcrowded lives goes by a number of monikers — time famine, affluenza, time stress — and has inspired hundreds of websites, a few bestsellers, even religious and social movements, all aimed at getting us to slow down and, if not smell, at least glimpse the roses, instead of roaring by at highway speeds.

But actually slowing down? That's another matter.

Sarah Susanka, who set the architecture world on its ear in 1998 with the publication of The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for The Way We Really Live (Taunton Press), says letting go of our many distractions can be daunting.

In The Not So Big House, Susanka suggested that people building homes forget about external factors like resale value and focus on just what they really want in a home. The best-selling book and its follow-up series made Susanka a hero of the green living and simplicity movements.

But where it was all leading for the author was to a reassessing of not just where we live, but how we live in the world.

Americans are putting in, on average, 200 more work hours per year — that amounts to five 40-hour work weeks — now than in 1973. We have the longest work week of any industrialized nation. And an astounding one in three Americans describe themselves as chronically overworked.

In her new book, The Not So Big Life, in bookstores in May, Susanka suggests that people can apply the same Not So Big principles to their lives, discarding outside definitions of success and focusing only on those relationships, activities and things that truly matter to them.

Not that you have to drop out to do it. Instead, Susanka advises that people make small changes and see where that leads. "For example, if you constantly overschedule yourself," she says, "go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Take one day off completely and see what you experience." Or before you make an impulse purchase, take a minute to fully imagine what you hope the new possession will bring into your life. "Ask yourself, 'what am I looking for?'" Susanka says. "Chances are it's not really the red dress."

But if it turns out red dresses really do float your boat, that's OK, says Susanka. For her, the central question that begs answering in our modern lives is "How do I live life fully?"

Nick Durrie and Sandy McGovern grappled with that question just a few years ago. Nick was senior vice president of production at National Geographic Television and a widower. Sandy was divorced and, as the founding president of National Geographic Channels Worldwide, traveled internationally about half the year. When they fell in love and moved in together in 2000, they wanted to make changes in their lives. "Once I fell in love with Nick, I didn't want to be traveling all the time," Sandy says. "We felt we had a second chance."

They each started consulting businesses, giving them more time together, and got married. But they still found themselves tethered to a big house in Chevy Chase, Md., and the often-frustrating hubbub of the Washington, D.C., metro area.

"One day we just looked at each other and said why are we living here? We don't have any clients here. Why don't we just put this house on the market and figure out where we want to live?" Nick recalls.

In October that year, they sold the house, put their possessions in storage, packed up a Ford Explorer, topped off the load with an all-in-one printer and two laptops — and went on a coast-to-coast search.

"When the world's your oyster, it can be a bit daunting," Nick says. "You really start narrowing down what's important to you," Sandy adds. What was important to the Durries was finding a good-sized town that wasn't a suburb, but had access to a regional airport, an open-minded atmosphere — and good restaurants.

Their quest took them from Asheville, N.C., to Bend, Ore. About midway through, they stopped in New Mexico. Using a gift certificate to a Santa Fe spa that was a wedding gift, they found themselves in an outdoor hot tub with big fluffly snowflakes the size of half dollars falling. "It was amazing," Sandy recalls.

Three months later, they bought a home near Santa Fe — and with it came a whole new lifestyle. Eighty-hour work weeks and D.C. traffic jams became distant memories. These days, sharing an office — and office duties — in their Pueblo-style home is one of the pleasures of the Durries' scaled-down life. "We joke that Nick is the CFO for McGovern Media and I am the travel department for Durrie Enterprises," Sandy says. The couple has a standing appointment every afternoon at the gym. When one travels for business, the other often tags along. The Durries have also developed a community of friends from vastly varied backgrounds. Sandy says she has more women friends than ever before, a group Nick teasingly calls "The Girls Who Used to Be Somebody."

But past glories are just that. "Nobody talks about what they used to do," Sandy says. "There's no competition." Nick sums up the benefits of the simpler life he and Sandy chose this way.

"You don't have to be important anymore," he says. "You don't need your ego stroked by anything externally. You're just doing your work and you're happy."