Chris, a senior manager at a New York design studio can’t sleep. His mind is churning, thinking about the mountain of tasks facing him back at the office. Katrina, the production manager at a well-known publishing house is distracted by a work email at the dinner table. Her partner complains that she “never seems able to turn off.”
They’re not the only ones having difficulty disengaging from their jobs at the end of the workday. According to a seven-year study on workers’ performance, an inability to make this break between professional and personal time ranked among the top-10 stressful situations that people were least effective at handling. Technology has, of course, exacerbated the problem, offering both convenience and imposition, by putting our workplaces just a touch screen away.
