025: Work without end—the disappearance of the off switch
Is rest a new form of rebellion?
On a Sunday morning, the phone trembles on the nightstand. A vibration so slight it could be ignored, yet it reverberates through the body like a summons. A message awaits, a request, a reminder that the week is no longer contained by the calendar. The workweek has seeped into the weekend, as though the clock itself had sprung a leak.
Once, there was a switch. Offices closed their doors, factories dimmed, the store shuttered at dusk. Rest was not a choice but a rhythm, baked into the scaffolding of daily life. Now, the borders between work and not-work are porous, dissolving with each notification. A person is never fully off, never unreachable, never excused.
In a culture that treats exhaustion as loyalty, perhaps the simplest refusal—to pause, to rest, to wait—is the most radical act left.
The new shape of labor
Work has escaped its appointed hours and spaces. The office has migrated into the kitchen, the train car, the bedside table. A holiday is no longer a reprieve but a relocation of the workstation. Even hobbies—gardening, photography, writing—are recast as side hustles, each one evaluated for its monetization potential. To be human is to be productive, or at least to appear so.
The rise of digital tools promised freedom: remote access, flexible schedules, liberation from the cubicle. And in many ways, they delivered. A parent can leave early to catch a child’s recital, knowing the work can be finished later at home. A student in a rural town can collaborate with peers across continents. Technology has not stolen the off switch; rather, it has given us more power than ever to choose when to flip it. But choice is not the same as permission. Freedom without boundaries can become captivity by another name.
The seduction of productivity
Busyness has become a badge of honor. To be overbooked is to be valued, to be tired is to be indispensable. Productivity is not merely a measure of output but a form of identity. The endless grind whispers that worth is not innate but earned, task by task, email by email.
Perfectionism feeds this hunger. It convinces us that enough is never enough, that every message must be crafted flawlessly, every project polished without blemish, every outcome aligned with some impossible ideal. In such a climate, there is no rest—only the restless pursuit of a version of ourselves that never falters. Perfectionism masquerades as excellence, but in truth, it is a thief, stealing peace of mind and replacing it with a permanent sense of inadequacy.
The tyranny of instant response
In the age of instant messaging, even silence is suspect. To delay a reply is to risk being seen as inattentive, disengaged, or worse…insubordinate. The simple act of waiting has been recast as neglect. We live in a culture of the blinking cursor, the ellipsis that signals someone is typing, the expectation that presence equals immediacy.
A manager’s Slack message at 9 p.m. is read as a summons, not a suggestion. A colleague’s email on a Saturday afternoon arrives like a stone in the still water of leisure. Even the automated “sent from my phone” footer carries an undertone: I am always reachable, always working, even in transit.
This demand erodes not only our schedules but our souls. The constant readiness fragments attention, pulling us from the people in front of us, the books we meant to read, the inner lives we meant to tend. Even when we are not working, we are pre-working, bracing for the next ping, rehearsing responses in the back of the mind.
