Here’s a quick question for you: it’s 6am, your eyes have just adjusted to the light pouring through the blinds and your groggy brain is slowly powering on. What’s the first thing you do? Well, if you’re anything like around half the population, you’ll reach for your phone and check your work email as part of your morning ritual.
OK, here’s another one: it’s 10pm and you’re about to switch off the bedroom light, what’s the last thing you do? Again, for around a third of us, we’ll check our emails as one of the final actions before going to bed.
Checking emails is one of the final actions for many of us before going to bed.Credit: ljubaphoto
We never completely switch off from work, from early light to late at night, and this growing trend even has a new name: the infinite workday.
Most workers fall into one of two categories – segmenters and integrators – depending on how adept you are at separating your work and life schedules. However, new research shows that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep the two apart as technology speeds up and expectations rise.
Every time you open an email, send a private message or type a sentence using a Microsoft product, that click is captured. These trillions of data points are then anonymously aggregated to give us fascinating insights about how real people are spending their workdays – and this year’s data is confronting.
The average employee now sends or receives more than 50 messages outside core business hours.
Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that many office workers start checking their email in the early morning, before switching to instant communication channels such as Teams by 8am. Now, I don’t need to remind you of the additional problems this new technology brings, but research shows the number of messages a worker receives on Microsoft Teams is up 6 per cent year-on-year, averaging 153 per weekday.
The middle of the day, which was once thought of as our most productive window, is usually consumed by an avalanche of meetings in the calendar, with afternoons spent trying to keep up with the onslaught of information.
But the clearest indicator of the infinite workday occurs later on – yes, you can close your laptop screen, or travel home from the office, but work still stretches well into the evening.
