I’ve long advocated for the importance of spending your evenings disconnected from work, focusing instead on truly renewing activities. Whether relaxing, socializing, spending time on hobbies or fitness, the goal is to spend our time off in a way that restores our energy and brainpower for peak performance the next day.
Yet, intense workloads and challenging projects can make it hard to turn work off at night. The tangible satisfaction of getting a few more tasks completed or solving a complex problem you don’t have time to think about during the day can cause you to gravitate back to your computer. It’s counterintuitive, but resisting the lure of work at night is a better path to performing at peak.
To help motivate you, I'm excited to share the results of a new study featured in this Harvard Business Review article: Want to Be a Better Leader? STOP Thinking About Work After Hours Published by a team of three professors in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the researchers explored how effective leaders were depending on how they spent their evenings away from work. Spoiler alert: actually proves this theory that when we turn off from work at night, we perform better at work during the day. It always makes me so happy when studies come out that prove, with evidence, things that we kind of know in our gut and maybe have even experienced. Conducted by a team of professors at Purdue, University of Florida, and Florida State University.
They studied 73 managers and a paired direct report for each. For 10 days, the managers would report whether they spent the evening thinking about work or they spent the evening truly disconnected and just enjoying their time off and how they felt in the morning. Managers felt more energized, more identified with their leader role when they had detached at night. Managers who thought about work or ruminated about work problems in the evenings came to work feeling drained and less identified and motivated to be in a leader position during the day.
So the managers felt the benefits, but what was really validating is that they the researchers then interviewed the direct reports of each of those managers at the end of every day to ask how that leader performed. For the managers who had reported disconnecting the night before, their direct reports found their leader to be inspirational and powerful all day long. Direct reports of leaders who ruminated about work in the evenings reported their leaders to be less inspirational, less effective and less valuable to them.
It always makes me so happy when studies come out that prove, with evidence, things that we kind of know in our gut and maybe have even experienced. So, I hope that you'll take this to heart. Whether you are a manager, an individual contributor, or an entrepreneur, the value of disconnecting at night and having a true shift in focus to renewal activities will make you a better worker, leader, manager, performer. By spending your evenings truly disconnected from work, work will become more meaningful and fun for you.
If those boundaries have blurred for you, claim them back. Plan your evenings well so that you have fun, engaging activities to do. Align on expectations with your team and boss about after-hours communication so you feel more confident NOT checking email. Make a very mindful transition as you close out your work day, tying your day in a bow and then go have a wonderful evening. It will make you a better performer.