This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: You may know the feeling. You're supposed to have finished work for the day, but later, during your evening meal, you start mentally preparing for tomorrow's meeting.
Or you have a quick check of your emails while you half-watch TV. You might not mean to, or even want to. It's just something that you end up doing as part of the price of enjoying some autonomy at work.
For a while now, research has claimed that professional autonomy was a good thing. Being able to decide how, where and when you worked was considered a major plus in terms of motivation, job satisfaction and overall health. Although those benefits still exist, we now know that more autonomy can often also mean more work and less downtime.
Research shows that workers with a high degree of autonomy struggle to leave work behind at the end of the day. When you have control over your job, it can stay on your mind as you run through decisions and ponder unresolved problems. Switching off becomes difficult.
But the capacity to stop thinking about work during personal time—what's known as "psychological detachment"—is a form of emotional and cognitive recovery. Without it, resources are never fully replenished. The person who cannot switch off does not just feel tired—they go back to work the next day already running on empty.
Autonomy can make this detachment harder precisely because of the sense of ownership it brings. Responsibility does not respect working hours, and the person who controls their own job carries it home in a way that someone simply following instructions does not. Research my colleague and I conducted with 40 entrepreneurs—people whose working lives are especially autonomous—reveals another problem when your work and identity are entwined.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
