Whether you hit the gym or the couch, winding down after work is crucial to avoiding burnout and boosting job performance.
New research from University of Georgia management researchers sheds light on how people use the hours after work to relax and what habits can make the most of our daily “recovery” time.
Terry College of Business management professor Fadel Matta and his co-authors — Ryan Grant at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Kristen Shockley at Auburn University and Malissa Clark in UGA’s Department of Psychology — found that schedules and personality traits helped some people recover more after work than others.
They published their paper, “What’s Your 5 to 9? Antecedents and Outcomes of Profiles of Daily Recovery Experience Trajectories Across the Evening,” in the Journal of Applied Psychology earlier this year.
“We know that when people do more of these things in general, it’s better for their health and well-being, but we don’t really know how recovery unfolds over the course of the entire evening,” Matta said. “Does it matter when I relax or when I detach from work? We thought, let’s look at the trajectory of the entire evening.”
In a wide-ranging survey of young and middle-aged employees, Matta’s team logged how people spent their evenings. They also tracked how each employee’s recovery trajectory changed their next day at work.
Employees were asked to log what time they detached from thinking about work responsibilities, when they felt they controlled their own time, when they felt relaxed and if or how long they practiced non-work-related hobbies or activities. The next day, they logged how much energy they had at work and if they felt they had “mastered” their tasks. At the end of the project, Matta’s team had compiled about 10,000 days’ worth of individual recovery timelines.
Off the clock, but not off work
Respondents reported that 49% of nights they didn’t unplug from work or work thoughts until well after 5 p.m. When this was the case, they reported low next-day energy and job confidence. This was true even if they disconnected and relaxed fully by the time they went to bed.
Those who felt a low level of job confidence or “a lack of mastery” of their work on a given day reported delayed detachment from work responsibilities and work thoughts, setting them up for another evening of poor recovery.
“I think a lot of time, we’re in this rat race mentality of, ‘I’ve got so much stuff to do, I’ll take care of it tonight,’” Matta said. “That starts a vicious cycle because it carries over to the next day. You go to work fatigued. You get less done while you’re at work, and you end up with more that you need to take home with you.”
Early disconnection is key
Participants who reported nights when they were able to mentally disconnect from work right after clocking out had the best recovery results, including more energy and better job performance the next day, Matta said.
“When people started hot and were able to detach from work and engage in recovery activities for more of the evening, that resulted in more energy and more work accomplishment the next day,” he said.
Employees reported this extended recovery experience 24% of nights.
Planning bulk recovery nights
“Most nights, people come home, and they’re not able to detach from work or relax right away,” Matta said. “That relaxation steadily increases throughout the evening. That’s OK, but doing that is a much less effective recovery strategy than taking a full evening to recover.”
Even if you’re forced to finish up work from home from time to time, it’s very beneficial to plan evenings where you can use your entire 5 to 9 to relax or work on a hobby.
“When you do that, the next day you’re in a better mood, you have better energy and you’re able to get more work done,” Matta said. “Then it’s easier to detach from work that evening.”
At home, that can look like planning days when you don’t take your laptop home, or it can look like two spouses trading off cooking or child-rearing duties so the other can engage in a hobby or an extra workout.
At work, it can look like planning achievable goals for yourself, so you feel freer to detach from work right after leaving your desk.
“No one has the work-life balance they want, but our research shows you get more bang for your ‘recovery buck’ by securing two or three good nights a week versus one extra hour every night,” Matta said.
“The core implication for employees and managers is this idea of ‘buying in bulk,’” he added.