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Why Working ‘Off’ Hours Matters

‘Off’ hours would be times we think that we should not be working. To quote the Cornell and London School of Economics authors of the study:

“Even if you’re still working 40 hours a week, you’re working during time that you’ve mentally encoded as time off, or as time that should be for a vacation, and that can make you feel suddenly that your work is less enjoyable,” said Kaitlin Woolley, associate professor of marketing in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

So, this could be working on federal holidays, or while we are on vacation, and I am supposing this would apply to working during evening hours for those who have encoded they should not really be working then either.

Of course, with WFH and Hybrid, the situation has gotten a whole lot messier, and more challenging, in terms of setting good boundaries about when to work and not. It also depends on how we define work.

Does thinking about work on ‘off’ hours count as work? I think it does. Seriously, if messed up work hours takes that big a toll on work satisfaction, well then, no wonder so many people are resigning or rethinking their work.

People who dislike (ok fine…hate) their jobs are less motivated, less supportive of others and their common goals; they are less passionate, productive, and less able to build strong, positive relationships too.

So, if you or someone you know happens to dislike or hate their job, it is clearly not just about them.

Here is the part that is more about them: Low work satisfaction is very bad for individual health. Adverse effects can include: sleep problems, anxiety, depression, and all the many disorders related to these.

But even all of that is not just about them. Typically, there are family, friends, and coworkers counting on our physical, emotional, mental wellness—not only because it affects them directly but also because they care.

The people I know who work ‘Off” hours, actually know better. They know something is not right about what they are doing. And, they do it anyway. So why don’t they stop? What makes that hard?

What Makes Setting Work-Life Boundaries Hard

The authors of the study that found the 9% decline in work satisfaction believe that part of what is going on is a perception that other people are off and having fun while the worker who is expected by their employer to work during evening, weekend, vacation, or holiday hours is not.

But it is not always an employer imposing the ‘Off’ hours work. Often, it is self-imposed which can be driven by or associated with any number of internal factors:

  • Need for reassurance about one’s competence.
  • Distraction from emotional challenges.
  • Personality traits, such as highly conscientious, extraverted, neurotic, narcissistic

It is also true that some professions are simply more demanding than others. Doesn’t matter.

No matter what the cause, working ‘Off’ hours seems a serious matter with serious effects.

For the good of all then…for individuals, families, and organizations, here are a couple of tips for employers and individuals to get things under better control.

What Can Be Done

The authors of the study that found the 9% decrease in work satisfaction suggest that employers could build off hours work groups so people can feel that they are in it with other people. Sounds like they are talking about FOMO without using that word.

For individuals, again, there can be a variety of deeply embedded psychological or even cultural drivers. Still, I think that what matters more than the ‘why’ could be the ‘how’ to get better control over the impact of the drivers, whatever they are. How can we stay focused on our work when we think we are supposed to be working and then put the thing down. From an earlier post:

Ever notice how hard it can be to stop yourself from doing one thing to move on to the next? Ever notice how much the last thing you never really put down gets all over everything else? So maybe you wind up exhausted from carrying all of this around all day long, not paying a whole lot of quality attention to anything—and it shows.

One poorly attended activity after another can ruin both the enjoyment and results of that activity and burden you with an overall sense of fatigue and dissatisfaction that really doesn’t need to be there.

Poorly disciplined work habits are just that. Habits. And, my sense of the best way to break a bad habit is to build a new and better one. It’s like planting a new garden and letting the old one go to seed.

Here is something that can help, a free exercise called Focus and Release, which you can grab off my website. Scroll down to the “Complimentary…” box at madelaineweiss.com for the simple 1-page exercise instruction. Please enjoy, and let us know what you find!

Warmly,

Madelaine 

Photo by pexels-nataliya-vaitkevich