It’s Saturday morning and your boss emails you a question that can wait until Monday. If you’re like me, you read the message while walking out of your yoga class and respond before lunch. This work culture makes the U.S. an outlier among high-income economies.
Since 2017, countries including France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Australia, Slovakia, Greece, and Argentina have legislated some form of a right to disconnect. The European Union is working on a policy that could take effect as soon as 2028. In Australia, employees have the right not to read or respond to employers outside of work hours.
In Portugal, mid-size employers risk fines of over $10,000 for contacting employees when they’re off the clock. As we think about the employment landscape in the U.S. this Labor Day, we should consider a similar approach that protects the right of employees to not work when they’re not officially working. This could solve a lot of problems for families and communities while actually improving job performance.
Since the pandemic, the boundaries between work and home have all but collapsed. With many workers still doing a lot of remote work, many of us send our first email early in the morning and our last late at night, creating what Microsoft calls the “infinite workday.” We squeeze in a load of laundry, parent-teacher conference, and family dinner somewhere in between. Being pulled in so many directions at the same time is awful for our health and the quality of our work, for a simple reason: The human brain can’t multitask.
We lose focus and become easily distracted. We can’t get things done as quickly or as easily as we should be able to, and often quality suffers.” Humans just didn’t evolve to keep switching between tasks as quickly and regularly as we do today, Leonardi warns. This explains why so many of us are exhausted and burned out.
It also explains why we spend so much time working: We aren’t as efficient as we could be. When I don’t work on the weekend, I unquestionably show up as a better employee on Monday morning. That’s because spending time with friends and family, exercising, getting outdoors, and volunteering in my community leave me refreshed and energized.
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