Marilyn Monroe once said: \u201cA career is wonderful, but you can\u2019t curl up with it on a cold night.\u201d Only these days, you can. The march of technology, the rise of hybrid and remote working, and an increasing culture of presenteeism (working longer than contractually required, or when sick) have blurred the boundaries between work and leisure.<\/p>\n
Research by Business in the Community<\/a> (BITC), a UK-based responsible business network, shows that 55% of employees feel pressed to respond to calls or check emails outside work, while high workloads drive two in five to work overtime. Yet switching off from work when you aren\u2019t working (psychological detachment, to give it its scientific name) is vital not just for your health, but for productivity.<\/p>\n \u201cEmpirical studies<\/a> have identified a positive relationship between psychological detachment \u2013 which includes refraining from job-related tasks as well as mentally disconnecting during nonwork time \u2013 and job performance,\u201d says Sabine Sonnentag, a professor of work and organisational psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany. \u201cConversely, a lack of psychological detachment is associated with negative mood and impaired wellbeing.\u201d<\/p>\n The irony is that the greater the level of work stressors \u2013 including an excessive workload, time pressures or conflict with colleagues \u2013 the harder it is to achieve psychological detachment, which increases the likelihood of an evening of rumination, or even sneaking off to open your laptop. Sonnentag calls this the recovery paradox<\/a>: \u201cGreater exposure to job stressors simultaneously calls for but prevents recovery,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n End your working from home day with a cue to deactivate the stress reponse system \u2013 such as jumping around to loud music. Posed by model. Photograph: Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n Claire Ashley<\/a>, former GP and author of The Burnout Doctor<\/a> , recommends ending each working day with the same specific act or routine. \u201cPractising a daily ritual serves as a cue to deactivate the stress-response system,\u201d she says. \u201cI like to do some movement, other people might want to put on loud music and jump around, or do Wordle. Over time, it becomes like a Pavlovian response, signalling to your body that the work day is done.\u201d<\/p>\n People working remotely often put in longer hours compared with office-based workers<\/p>\n Creating a clear division between work and leisure is especially important if, like 40% <\/a> of Britons, you now work either fully or partly from home. While hybrid or home working has advantages \u2013 avoiding the time, expense and stress of a commute, making your own lunch, greater flexibility around working hours \u2013 people working remotely often put in longer hours<\/a> compared with office-based workers (though the researchers in this US study note that this could be due to more breaks and interruptions). In a survey<\/a> of more than 8,000 people who had shifted to remote working as a result of the pandemic, 52% said they regularly worked longer hours than before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be really challenging when your home doubles as your workplace,\u201d says Ashley. \u201cYou need physical, as well as mental, separation. Without a designated workspace on which you can close the door, it\u2019s even more important to \u2018clear your desk\u2019 and put work things out of sight.\u201d<\/p>\n Before you do, however, it could be worth tying up loose ends. A study<\/a> from Ball State University, Indiana, found that leaving work tasks unfinished, especially important ones, is associated with poor psychological detachment in the evening. This isn\u2019t about pulling an all-nighter: \u201cTaking a few minutes before you leave to note down some thoughts about how you will address the unfinished task the next day helps enable you to switch off,\u201d says Sonnentag.<\/p>\n Scheduling after-work activities is a good ploy for those who find it difficult to draw the working day to a close<\/p>\n Scheduling after-work activities is a good ploy for those who find it difficult to draw the working day to a close. Arrangements that involve a commitment, financial or social \u2013 such as booking a fitness class, time in a pottery studio, or meeting up with friends \u2013 are particularly helpful. But don\u2019t disrupt your downtime by checking in with work, warns Ashley. If muting notifications isn\u2019t sufficient, take the relevant apps off your phone when you aren\u2019t at work. Better still, have a separate work phone \u2013 with a voicemail greeting saying what your work hours are, or when you\u2019ll be next checking it.<\/p>\n Engaging in a hobby such as gardening or spending time with friends will help you to recover from work. Posed by models. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n Getting active is a good way to switch off after work. It was one of three successful strategies identified in a 2023 study<\/a> on post-work recovery conducted at the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. The other two were spending time with friends and family, and engaging in hobbies, such as sewing or gardening.<\/p>\n Sonnentag, however, believes what we are thinking and feeling (the recovery experience) during any given activity, be it knitting, baking or meditating) is more important than the activity itself, when it comes to how effectively it helps us recover from work. \u201cOur research<\/a> identified four important recovery experiences for recuperation and unwinding,\u201d she says. These are psychological detachment \u2013 as in forgetting about work (relaxation, mastery) and the successful completion of tasks or challenges that boost feelings of self-worth and autonomy, meaning a sense of control over how you spend your leisure time.<\/p>\n Having options is particularly important if you\u2019re trying to solve the recovery paradox, because \u201can activity that offers a recovery experience for one person may not be helpful to another\u201d, Sonnentag says. The oft-suggested long, candlelit bath might be the last thing you need.<\/p>\n Regardless of whether you work from home or not, the connectivity of the digital age ensures that work is never far from our fingertips, says Louise Cashman, a business psychologist and wellbeing manager at a large consultancy. \u201cConstantly bombarded with notifications, there is a sense of an ever-increasing demand on our time and attention, a need to always be available.\u201d This can take its toll. A recent study<\/a> by the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University found that engaging with work email during leisure time was associated with poorer physical and psychological health.<\/p>\n However, a compulsion to be on the end of the \u201celectronic leash\u201d when not at work isn\u2019t a personal failing. It\u2019s frequently driven by workplace culture. In the Manchester study, over a third of workers reported that their boss regularly emailed them outside normal working hours and a quarter said there was an expectation of responding to emails during leisure time.<\/p>\n Always being available to work doesn\u2019t give you the rest you need and can lead to burnout. Posed by model. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a big problem with presenteeism in this country,\u201d says Ashley. \u201cIt\u2019s counterproductive. Being terminally \u2018on\u2019 prevents employees from getting the physical and mental rest they need and can trigger burnout.\u201d While the prevalence of burnout in the UK peaked during and immediately after the pandemic, she says, \u201cdata shows that one in five remain at high risk<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Cashman suffered burnout in her previous job as a GP. It was what led her to move into a career focusing on workplace wellbeing (a role, she says, that barely existed prepandemic). She is an advocate of the Dramma model<\/a> for workplace wellbeing \u2013 an acronym that stands for detachment, relaxation, autonomy, mastery, meaning and affiliation (neatly mirroring Sonnentag\u2019s findings on recovery experiences).<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t help noticing, while writing this piece, that Sonnentag and I were communicating out of hours. When I point this out, she says \u201cworking at the weekend per se isn\u2019t necessarily a problem, it\u2019s about defining the boundaries that work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Cashman agrees. \u201cWith tech and workplace culture blurring the boundaries between work and nonwork time, we are tasked with creating our own. This may be putting an out of office reply on outside working hours. I even put one on if I\u2019m having a particularly busy day or week \u2013 it helps take the pressure off and manages others\u2019 expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n Communicating your boundaries clearly makes not just your life but others\u2019 lives easier<\/p>\n \u201cBoundaries shouldn\u2019t be perceived as shirking or making life difficult for others,\u201d says Ashley. \u201cIn fact, communicating your boundaries clearly makes not just your life but others\u2019 lives easier, as they know what they can expect of you.\u201d<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve established your work-related boundaries, you must stand by them. \u201cIt can be challenging,\u201d says Ashley, \u201cespecially if you are a people pleaser \u2013 but it gets easier over time.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s tempting to frame work as an energy-sapping stress \u2013 something we do because we have to. But this disregards the fact that many people love their work. In a 2023 Randstad workmonitor report<\/a>, surveying more than 35,000 people in 15 countries, 48% of people said they would \u201cquit their job if it was preventing them enjoying their life\u201d, implying that the demands of the 21st-century workplace aren\u2019t necessarily viewed negatively.<\/p>\n If you live and breathe your job, is there any real need to enforce a boundary between work and play? Ashley believes there is. \u201cMost cases of burnout begin with people loving their jobs,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone needs downtime.\u201d<\/p>\n