User studies and intuition both suggest that the activities that a knowledge worker engages in change—sometimes dramatically—over time. Projects and milestones come and go, and the tools and information resources used within an activity often change over time as well. Furthermore, activities completed in the past and their outcomes often impact activities in the present, and ongoing activities will, in turn, affect activities that will be undertaken in the future. Capturing activity over the course of time has long been a problem for desktop computing.

This means also that the predominantly linear time is comp-lemented by greater awareness of cyclical times and temporal routines which are overlapping each other.

So does polychronicity scale? Or is it a nested phenomenon whereby someone might be monochronic within hour- long intervals but polychronic when the frame enlarges to a month? And if so, what might be the consequences of different nesting combinations?

In contrast to the assumption oftime as linear, with ordered chunks progressing ina straightforward manner, people often negotiate time rhythmically, arranging timein patterns and tempos that do not always co-exist harmoniously. In line with earlier CSCW findings [e.g., 4, 9, 45, 46], we term thisrhythmic time, which acknowledges both the rhythmic nature of temporal experience as well a potential disorderliness or ‘dissonance’ when temporal rhythms conflict.Like mosaic time, bringing dissonant rhythms into semi-alignment requires adaptation, work, and patience.

Timing as a