You're Always Online and You're Calling It Work Ethic. I Did That Too.

Used to hit send on emails at midnight and be satisfied with myself. I wasn't anxious, I felt fine, it made me feel like I was staying ahead. There was an air of seriousness about being up while the rest of the world slept - like the kind of person who gets things done.

I never realised I couldn't switch off. I wrote a whole other narrative about that to avoid admitting it.

Remote working didn't cause it. It just took away the one thing that silently protected you.

There used to be a natural cut-off for your day. Wake up, take your bag, and get out of the building.

Annoying though it was, being forced to sit in silence while commuting, you still thought about your work. But your laptop stayed in the office. Your manager couldn't message you in your kitchen. There was an inherent separation - not through effort, but circumstance.

That separation doesn't exist anymore. For most, it has been replaced by nothing.

Now you are at home and at work simultaneously, with work notifications pinging from every device you own. The only way to get that separation now is by forcing yourself, and it is extremely difficult to do when the implicit message is to just keep on doing.

Consequently, most people don't create any boundaries and they just stay available. Then six months later they wonder why they're miserable.

Rapid responses train people - and not in a good way.

You send your manager an email at 9pm. No big deal. Then another at 9pm one night. Then another, and so on. Three months later, she sends you an email at 9pm without hesitation, because based on her previous interactions with you, that's when you'll respond. One email at a time you built this assumption, without meaning to.

Now, when you fail to respond - either through exhaustion, or because you're having dinner, or just can't be bothered - something feels amiss. Like you've dropped the ball. It sounds a bit silly when you say it out loud, but that's what's happening.

I know one person who was called out during a one-on-one - not as a formal complaint, but as an aside - for not responding quickly enough. They'd been setting the 9pm precedent for months and, without wanting to, they'd trained their manager to expect it. Anything less than instant seemed like negligence.

That is not a good work ethic. That is a self-created trap.

Burnout looks nothing like people think it should.

Most people imagine it in terms of crying in the toilets, or total and absolute collapse. Sometimes it is this, but that is the endgame.

The first warning signs look much more mundane. Rereading the same paragraph three times at 10am on a Tuesday. Being irritable with people you like about trivial matters and knowing the problem isn't them. Having no opinions on your work at all - neither negative, nor positive. You just want it to end, then the next day begins and it starts again.

This is what burnout actually looks like for most people. And it doesn't seem important, so it is overlooked. You just assume that you're tired, and a weekend away will solve it. It often will, but rarely fixes the underlying problem for long.

And then there is the one that nobody really talks about.

Boreout.

You aren't doing too much - you're not doing enough that is meaningful. You turn up and respond as necessary, but nothing truly matters. You just stopped caring at some point, but appear busy from the outside.

This, I suspect, happens to far more people than burnout - particularly those who find their roles have drifted far from what originally captured them. They are present and appearing functional, but no longer interested internally. It leads to the same end point, just a different route.

What actually helps. Forget the frameworks, here's what works.

Communicate that you are logging off. Put a note in your calendar and say it once at the end of the day, and stick to it. People adapt much more quickly than you might imagine - and the ones who don't, tell you a lot.

Treat your evening as if it were a client meeting you can't miss. You would never cancel on a client, but you can abandon your personal evening routine twelve times a week without a second thought. This is wrong and it needs to be fixed.

Be honest about why you're still online at 10pm. Sometimes it really is work. But more often than not, it is anxiety. A fear of missing something, or a desire to appear committed when you're just afraid of being perceived as shirking responsibility. Staying online and replying won't help that. It will only prolong it.

One more thing.

You will likely work for longer than you already have. The work schedule you keep - the hours, the expectation that you should be contactable, the ways in which you manage to switch off - will follow you for a long time.


Sign off now. The emails will still be there in the morning.