Your Recovery Gap: Switching Off
Stopping work and stopping thinking about work are two different things.
Research calls the ability to mentally disengage from work psychological detachment, and it is an important part of whether time away from work is restorative.
The difficulty with modern times is that work doesn’t necessarily end just because the working day does. Attention can (and often does) remain attached to those unfinished tasks and unresolved decisions, so recovery depends partly on whether the mind can release its grip on the work role.
Pattern
Psychological detachment is one of four recovery experiences identified by researchers Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz, alongside relaxation, mastery, and control which we’ll get into in other articles in the learning library.
Psychological detachment is essentially the ability to stop thinking about work during non-work time and the ability varies considerably between people.
A 2017 meta-analysis looked across 86 publications, 91 independent study samples, and more than 38,000 employees to understand how detachment from work relates to recovery. It found that people who reported greater detachment also reported less exhaustion, greater life satisfaction, better well-being, and better sleep.
So if psychological detachment is such an important part of recovery, why is it so difficult to do?
Belief
Part of what makes switching off difficult is what we believe being available says about us.
For some people, responsiveness can become tied to being responsible, reliable, or committed to their work. Researchers have a term for the pressure to remain responsive, which is workplace telepressure, the preoccupation and urge to respond quickly to work-related messages.
The issue is not that responsiveness is bad. Some jobs require it.
The problem is when being reachable starts to feel like a measure of how well you are doing your job, rather than something the job requires at certain times.
The boundary between work and non-work isn’t simply a line between two parts of the day. It is shaped by what we believe belongs to work, what we believe we should remain available for, and how much responsibility we continue to feel once the work itself has stopped. Those boundaries can be quite different from person to person, and they can change depending on the role, the demands around us, and what we have come to expect of ourselves. A person can be physically away from work and still experience very little separation from it.
The Reflex
The expectation to stay available can also change how we pay attention to work.
Instead of waiting for something to require our attention, we can start looking for it.
Checking for new messages.
Thinking about what’s unfinished.
Replaying conversations from earlier in the day.
Working through an “urgent” problem that does not need to be solved right now.
The more often we check, respond, or mentally return to work outside of working hours, the more familiar that pattern can become. Eventually, it can start to feel less like a deliberate choice and more like something we simply do.
Behavior
Telling someone to have boundaries is like telling someone you shouldn’t smoke.
Yes, they know that.
So we aren’t going to tell you things like “have a stopping point” or give you seemingly useful “yes, I know” jargon.
Instead, we have a question:
What’s something that’s important to you that isn’t work-related?
Things that light you up.
Things that you’re curious about.
Things you want to do with your time.
Activities that create psychological distance from work can support recovery because they give your attention somewhere else to go.
That can mean doing something absorbing, learning something new, moving your body, spending time with other people, or simply choosing how you want to spend your time rather than continuing to orbit around your Slack and inbox.
The point isn’t to find the perfect post-work routine. It’s to create experiences that draw your attention away from work and give you a genuine sense of being somewhere else, mentally as well as physically.
Environment
There’s one more piece we tend to overlook: the environment around us.
We learn what is normal from the people around us and those norms can become surprisingly powerful.
Over time, an external expectation can become an internal standard. What started as something the environment asked of us can become something we ask of ourselves.
Which means that sometimes, switching off requires more than changing what we do with our time. It requires noticing what we have learned to expect from ourselves in the first place.
Sources
Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204–221.
Wendsche, J., & Lohmann-Haislah, A. (2017). A Meta-Analysis on Antecedents and Outcomes of Detachment from Work. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2072.
Barber, L. K., Conlin, A. L., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2019). Workplace telepressure and work–life balance outcomes: The role of work recovery experiences. Stress and Health, 35(3), 350–362.
Karabinski, T., Haun, V. C., Nübold, A., Wendsche, J., & Wegge, J. (2021). Interventions for improving psychological detachment from work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 26(3), 224–242.
Ashforth, B. E., Kreiner, G. E., & Fugate, M. (2000). All in a day's work: Boundaries and micro role transitions. Academy of Management Review, 25(3), 472–491.
Kreiner, G. E., Hollensbe, E. C., & Sheep, M. L. (2009). Balancing borders and bridges: Negotiating the work-home interface via boundary work tactics. Academy of Management Journal, 52(4), 704–730.
Park, Y., Fritz, C., & Jex, S. M. (2011). Relationships between work-home segmentation and psychological detachment from work: The role of communication technology use at home. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(4), 457–467.
Sonnentag, S., Kark, R., & Venz, L. (2024). Leader support for recovery: A multi-level approach to employee psychological detachment from work. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 97(4), 1762–1788.
Recommended reading
Set Boundaries, Find Peace
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