This is the last message for my usual summer stopping. Regular service will resume on 1 September. Enjoy the dog days of the summer, everyone.
It must have been in 2006 or 2007 when I was in the line of security at Heathrow Airport to scroll through my e -mail on my blackberry (look it up, children). As I look up, I notice a large advertisement in the departure room that said: “Leave the country but not the office – [enter large UK telecom company here]. “
That’s when it touched me. Thanks to the internet and mobile telecommunications, there was no more excuse to disconnect from the work. Our boss and customers can reach us, regardless of the time of the day (or at night, as it turned out pretty quickly) or wherever we were.
A few years later the financial crisis happened, and then it became clear to me and many others that it didn’t make it worse to switch off work. Suddenly we worked around the clock to deal with the crisis. Many people are burned out, but at least their mental health suffered from constant stress. And all that was before the arrival of social media, which made everything much worse.
In 2008 I started to impose a rule that I would leave the office between 5 pm and 6 pm, whatever happens, so that I could go home, cook (a hobby that I had taken over at that time) and got some downtime. If there is work to do, I could still come online again later in the evening, but I needed that time to separate from work and to keep my common sense. I stay with this rule to this day.
Turning off work has become an absolute necessity in this rather insane world in which we live, so I wanted to leave you for my interruption with a New study Published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (yes, that exists) who has looked at how being able to separate work influences well -being.
The study investigated the reactions of more than 30,000 Germans who have participated since 2011 in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSEEP). The goal was to assess whether people who were easier to separate work from leisure time would also be happier and have higher life satisfaction.
As a German I can tell you that this is an important study, because I have the reputation for my colleagues at work to always work (not true), and Germans in general have a reputation for ‘life to work’, instead of ‘working to live’. Or to use the sentence by Henning Wehn, the German comic ambassador in the UK“”We Germans, we love to laugh – once the work is done. ‘
The survey asked the participants to judge how well they could eliminate while returning the work, as well as whether they felt angry, concerned, happy or sad. The survey also asked them to assess their satisfaction with their health, sleep, job, leisure and family.
Below is the result for a one-point increase in the ability to detach the work (on a six-point scale). The results are clear. Being able to disable work increases happiness and reduces negative emotions. The most important thing is that it improves job satisfaction, helps us to sleep better and enables us to enjoy our free time.
Detachment of work and well -being
Source: Baktash and Pütz (2025)
So, while I drive in the sunset for two weeks (not really, I still work, but at least I can work less because I don’t write these messages), my advice is to find ways to eliminate. Not only when you go on vacation, but every day. It will improve your life considerably if you can do that.
#Time #switch