The Rise of the Infinite Workday
What he stats in Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report mean, and why the Infinite Workday is bad for you.
This is just blowing my mind 🤯 2 minutes between interruptions??!!
Talking about the fragmentation of our attention! This is insane, unsustainable, unhealthy, and destroys our ability to create good work.
If you've been following me for a while, you know that this is the ultimate flow killer. ☠️
This is the anti-thesis to finding focus and getting into flow.
That is precisely what I work on with clients, individually, with teams, and with leaders.
Refining their organizational culture and the corresponding behaviors.
This is where it starts.
If as leaders you don't address this, nothing else matters.
You can give all the possible well intentioned trainings, workshops, and offsites to improve collaboration within and across teams, but if the underlying behaviors and patterns are not addressed, the impact will be minimal or null.
In its 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft calls this the rise of the "Infinite Workday".
This is highly problematic. I already hear the voices saying that "work-life balance" is a myth anyway and that in today's reality that is impossible.
Well, first, let's not use that term. Work is part of our life. I rather call it work/non-work balance, and it's about integrating work in a healthy and sustainable way into our lives.
And this certainly ain't it.
Secondly, that "balance" is perhaps a myth and it anyway looks very different for each of us and that's fine.
However, one thing is undeniable. We need time to recover, to rest, and to reset our brains. The research on this is clear.
We can't be constantly "on". And if we are, that has huge long-term costs, both for our mental and physical health.
And the invasion of our lives by omnipresent technology and constant connection to the virtual world isn't making things easier.
Take this as an example:
"40% of people who are online at 6 am are reviewing email for the day’s priorities."
Every heard of morning routines? Think of them what you want, but I have yet to see one which includes reviewing emails at 6am (probably while you are still in bed).
And it's not just the mornings, the report continues:
"The average employee now sends or receives more than 50 messages outside of core business hours, and by 10 pm, nearly a third of active workers dive back into their inboxes."
And then:
"Nearly 20% of employees actively working on the weekend are checking their email before noon on Saturday and Sunday. And over 5% are back in email on Sunday evenings —the Sunday scaries are real and measurable."
If that is not alarm bell, I don't know what is! 🚨
So in that spirit, today at the end of your work day, turn off your mobile devices, don't check your work messages, and enjoy the weekend with people you love doing things you love.
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