You work all night, you work all day, to pay the bills you have to pay? (There really is a Mamma Mia quote for everything.) But seriously—we’re all overworking, right? Like, we’re working all day and then, somehow, well into the evening, too? Maybe the moment you open your eyes, you instinctively reach for your phone to check your work emails. And maybe, on your “lunch break,” you find yourself quickly finishing up some last-minute to-dos. And possibly, on your commute home, you use the “free time” as a chance to get ahead for the next day. You might even find your laptop calling to you after dinner.
If all of this sounds familiar, you may have found yourself falling into the trap of the “infinite workday”—which is exactly what it sounds like. A workday that feels like it never ends, whether you’re heading home for the evening or even jetting off on holiday.
And Microsoft’s Work Trend Index has found evidence to back it up. Meetings outside the traditional 9 to 5 have risen by 153%, with meetings after 6pm increasing by 46%. Plus, the average employee sends or receives over 50 messages outside of core business hours. They even found a new “third peak” of work, which happens at 10pm.
It’s “characterised by a frenzied pace and never-ending pull to be working,” explains Bree Groff, author of TODAY WAS FUN: A Book About Work (Seriously). It tends to follow a similar pattern. “The classic infinite workday starts as early as 6am, with an employee rolling over to check their email seconds after they open their eyes and before looking at any partner lying next to them,” she says.
Throughout this unending workday, things probably feel hectic. You might feel pulled in multiple directions or find yourself multitasking to the point of confusion. “The workday itself is characterised by a barrage of interruptions with little to no focus time,” says Groff. And this style of work is becoming more common—Microsoft cites that workers are interrupted on average every 2 minutes by a meeting, email or message. “And the work only continues into the evening with evening emails,” she says. 29% of active employees claim they dive back into their inboxes by 10pm. “Then, of course, there’s weekend work too, with no day spared from the grind.”
Wait a minute, you’re probably thinking. Didn’t we retire unhealthy work buzzwords like “grind” and “hustle” along with the metaphorical death of the millennial girlboss? Aren’t we in a new era of healthy work habits thanks to Gen Z? After all, the younger generation is supposedly ushering in a new type of work characterised by boundaries, clear communication and prioritising mental health. They introduced the ‘quiet quitting’ trend, which is essentially doing the bare minimum at work, along with ‘resenteeism,’ a rising feeling of resentment amongst those left in jobs they are unhappy in. Some have even tried to take ‘micro retirements’ in which they quit and jet off for an extended holiday every few years.
Even though Gen Z may be resoundingly rejecting hustle culture and all of the toxic patterns that come with it, the rise of the infinite workday suggests that its influence may be pretty hard to weed out.
“The infinite workday is hustle culture’s less sexy cousin,” says Groff. In fact, the infinite workday suggests that not only does hustle culture still exist, it’s morphing into something even more insidious. “For all the harm that hustle culture caused, at least it held at its core a sense of agency—a feeling that though you may be working all hours, you at least were hustling for something. The infinite workday is largely unchosen—it’s simply the state of being in many organisations. It creates the feeling that you have to run just to stay in place.”
She goes on: “In other words, hustle culture was akin to trying to get a high score in a video game: thrilling and addicting, even if costly. The infinite workday is playing Whack-A-Mole: reactionary and anxiety-ridden. It’s threat detection, and it’s incessant.”
Ok, so… how come every workplace overworking its employees? If Gen Z are so against “the hustle,” how have so many young people found themselves in an infinite workday cycle?
According to Groff, it all comes down to the culture of the specific workplace. “Unfortunately, it’s the default culture of many workplaces,” she says. “I don’t blame anyone for finding themselves stuck in the infinite workday matrix. It’s hard to combat as one person in a system that operates with a harried freneticism. In other words, when you have 117 emails in your inbox every day (the average number received according to Microsoft), what can you do besides do your best to read and respond to them?”
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And once an infinite workday pattern has been established at a workplace, it’s very, very hard to tear yourself out of it as an individual. “It’s very hard for one person to announce they’re taking heads-down time for two hours every afternoon or signing off at 5pm when the rest of the team is cranking into the evening,” Groff says. “Just imagine the side-eye.”
As Groff explains, the dangers of the infinite workday are pretty self-evident. “The harm is palpable,” she says, citing:
- Constant low-grade anxiety (if not high-grade anxiety) that a request, message or meeting may at any moment demand our attention
- The way it becomes impossible to focus on our friends or family or even read a book for leisure when the voice in our head (or messages on our screens) yells that we haven’t finished work
- Taking care of our health (exercising, eating a proper meal, going to the doctor) feels like a distraction from getting more done
So far, so helpless. But is there anything we can do to establish a healthier schedule at work?
“Solving the infinite workday problem is complex because it was created by a complex system, but it’s also 100% solvable,” Groff says. “It’s solvable because it’s a human system, and therefore we, as humans, can make different decisions.”
Unfortunately, it really starts at the leadership level. “For example, it’s the leader who needs to declare a two-hour heads-down block for the team to work on what’s truly important,” she says. “It’s the leader who needs to resist every urge to send the 9pm message which triggers infinite workday responses from the rest of the team.”
This is where AI can be used for good, she says. “The trick is in using AI to handle tasks such that the humans are done with work at 5pm—not so that the humans can pick up yet more, different work after hours.”
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And what can you, the employee, do in the meantime? Groff suggests:
1. Acknowledge that work is a bottomless pit. There will always be “one more thing” you could get done. The sooner you stop trying to hit the bottom of your work pit, the better. Also, who wants to be at the bottom of a pit anyway?
2. Start occupying your calendar before work can get to it. So often, we let work ravage our lives and our families, friends, rest and hobbies get the leftovers. Instead, make a habit of scheduling life first: put doctors’ appointments, exercise, even date nights as blocks on your calendar weeks and months in advance. The reason doesn’t need to be visible to your employer if you don’t want it to be. If you need, block every evening on your work calendar for “evening time”. It’s a bit absurd that it’s necessary, but sometimes it is. In many ways, our calendars have become our overlords in modern work, so make sure your overlord has the right priorities.
3. Experiment with stopping work before it’s comfortable. While leaving a big presentation unfinished may raise flags with your boss, you can experiment with leaving a few emails or messages unattended to—at least for an evening. We often take so much pride in being responsive (and frankly, it feels good to be needed) that it can feel like any unanswered message is burning a hole in our pocket. Often, however, the sender of that message is thinking about 85 other things and is glad to have the email in your court and not in theirs. So, take the opportunity to slow down the ping-pong game. Enjoy a nice dinner. Work will still be there for you in the morning.