(MONEY Magazine) – Feeling overworked? You now have a national movement to share your pain. A coalition of work-and-family organizations has designated Oct. 24 as Take Back Your Time Day. They hope Americans will take the day off or at least attend forums and discussions about the problem of long hours and short vacations. (How relaxing.) "Americans work more hours per year than in the '70s, despite huge leaps in productivity, which is causing tremendous health and social problems," says John de Graaf, national coordinator of Take Back Your Time Day.

The people behind this event offer statistics that are sound-bite worthy: The average American worked 199 hours more in 2000 than in 1973, and we get three fewer vacation weeks a year than do workers in Western Europe. All told, Americans labor for nine weeks more each year than do Europeans--hence the date of Oct. 24, which is when we would be finished working for the year if only we lived like the Dutch.

We could all use a few more days off, but I'm skeptical about whether our working hours have really increased so dramatically. Consider the findings of the Americans' Use of Time Project at the University of Maryland, perhaps the most authoritative source on work hours. The project gathers its numbers through time diaries, which require respondents to keep an ongoing record of their day. (Surveys, the source of most government data, simply ask employees to remember their work hours, and people tend to exaggerate.) Based on the diaries, work hours have remained largely unchanged since 1965--about 40 hours a week on average.

Many working parents clearly have less free time than before, the project data confirm. But the real problem may be that we are squandering the leisure time we have. The one activity that has markedly increased since the 1960s is watching TV. Americans today spend more than 15 hours a week plopped in front of the tube--more than twice the amount of time we spend socializing with real-live flesh-and-blood people. Yet research shows that we enjoy TV much less than other activities. So however you decide to celebrate (or ignore) Oct. 24, try skipping Law & Order reruns that night. --PENELOPE WANG