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.
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.
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.
Allowing workers to disconnect would therefore make them better employees. It could also solve several public policy problems. Our children need present caregivers. It only takes seconds for a child to fall or drown while we’re distracted by a manager’s latest missive. When parents spend more time on screens, their children also develop poorer language skills. And, of course, children are unlikely to open up about their problems while we’re distracted on our phones.
Of course, as Americans know one another less, we help one another less. This can explain why volunteerism has also been declining. That’s particularly sad because banding together has long been a central part of our national character, as Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote in Democracy in America. It’s especially important in a country like ours where people can’t rely on a strong social safety net when they hit hard times.
A series of studies published in 2021 found that when people receive non-urgent work emails outside of work hours, we tend to think we need to respond faster than the senders believe is necessary. Receiving these types of emails also increases our stress and decreases our wellbeing, but senders underestimate the degree to which their messages stress us out. Indicating in the email that a response wasn’t expected right away reduced the pressure on recipients. An even better strategy could be schedule-sending emails so colleagues receive them when they return to work.
It stands to reason that our brains would be less foggy if we used those small slices of our lives to take a deep breath, notice our surroundings, and have short, pleasant interactions with the people around us. When we returned to our desks, we’d think more clearly, work more efficiently, and send better responses.
This Labor Day, there’s a way for workers to be healthier, happier, more productive, and solve a lot of our public policy problems, too. We need to stop working when we’re not working.
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