Why Does My Body Stay Switched On after Work?
The laptop is closed and dinner is over. Your heart rate is still up, and your attention keeps returning to the four o'clock meeting. The system that raised your readiness during the day is still running, because the workday continues in your thoughts and recovery has not begun.
Your body stays activated after work when the workday continues in your thoughts and when the time to recover is missing. The autonomic nervous system has a sympathetic branch that raises readiness and a parasympathetic branch that supports recovery, and thinking about work keeps the stress response running after the demand has ended (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006).
Why Does My Body Stay Switched On after Work?
How Do the Two Branches of the Autonomic Nervous System Work across a Day?
Why Does Thinking about Work Keep the Body Activated?
What Helps the Body Recover after Work?
How Do the Two Branches of the Autonomic Nervous System Work across a Day?
The autonomic nervous system controls the organs without conscious instruction, and it has two branches (McCorry, 2007). The sympathetic branch raises readiness for effort; the full set of changes it produces is described in What Does Fight or Flight Mean at Work?. The parasympathetic branch supports recovery. It slows the heart, narrows the airways, and increases digestive activity.
Both branches are active at all times, and what changes is the balance between them (McCorry, 2007). They can also shift in the same direction at once, or one can change while the other holds steady (Berntson, Cacioppo and Quigley, 1991).
The effort-recovery model, set out by Meijman and Mulder (1998), describes what happens across a working day. Meeting a demand produces load reactions, such as a raised heart rate and stress hormones in the blood. When the demand stops and recovery is possible, those reactions reverse. When recovery does not happen, they carry over into the next period of work and accumulate.
Recovery depends on activation falling, and that can happen well after the working day ends.
Why Does Thinking about Work Keep the Body Activated?
The body also responds to a demand it is thinking about. Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer (2006) named this the perseverative cognition hypothesis. Worry about a coming event and rumination about a past one keep the stress response running before the event and after it. Dread on a Sunday evening, replaying a meeting at night, and unfinished work that stays in mind are three forms of it.
A meta-analysis of 60 studies by Ottaviani and colleagues (2016) found that perseverative cognition is associated with a higher heart rate, higher cortisol, higher blood pressure, and lower heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is the standard index of the parasympathetic branch's influence on the heart, carried largely by the vagus nerve (Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology, 1996), so a lower value means the balance has moved away from recovery. The effects were small to moderate in size.
The same pattern shows up on an ordinary evening. In a diary study of 108 teachers, Cropley, Rydstedt, Devereux and Middleton (2015) found that the teachers who ruminated most about work had higher cortisol at ten in the evening than the teachers who ruminated least, and the difference held regardless of how they spent their evening leisure time. This was one cross-sectional study, so it shows an association in that group and does not establish the direction of cause on its own.
What Helps the Body Recover after Work?
The recovery research points to a specific mental state. Sonnentag and Fritz (2007) identified four recovery experiences in a sample of 930 workers. Psychological detachment means being mentally away from work during off-hours, with no thoughts about work tasks or problems. The other three are relaxation, mastery (an activity that demands attention and skill, such as learning something new), and control over how the time is spent.
In a later review, Sonnentag and Fritz (2015) found that job stressors, especially a heavy workload, reduce detachment, that low detachment predicts strain and poorer well-being, and that detachment buffers the effect of stressors on strain.
What the Autonomic Nervous System Is
Autonomic nervous system: the part of the nervous system that controls the organs without conscious instruction. Its sympathetic branch raises readiness for effort. Its parasympathetic branch supports recovery by slowing the heart and increasing digestive activity. Both branches are active at all times, and demand shifts the balance between them (McCorry, 2007).
Is Activation the Problem?
The cost comes from activation that continues after the demand has ended and from recovery that does not happen, because the load reactions then accumulate. Two things sustain that state after work. One is the thinking that continues the demand (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006). The other is a workload heavy enough that detachment becomes hard to reach (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2015).
This evening, choose one activity that requires your full attention, and afterward note how often your thoughts returned to work during it.
FAQ
Is it normal for the body to stay activated after work?
Yes. The effort-recovery model describes activation during work as the expected response to demand, with recovery afterward as the second half of the cycle (Meijman and Mulder, 1998). Activation continues after work when the demand continues in thought, and a meta-analysis of 60 studies measured the physiological pattern that goes with it (Ottaviani and colleagues, 2016).
Does this happen to everyone?
How much of it happens varies with the workload and with how much a person ruminates about work. Job stressors, especially a heavy workload, predict lower detachment from work in the evening, and lower detachment predicts more strain (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2015). In the teacher study, the difference in evening cortisol appeared between the highest and lowest ruminators (Cropley and colleagues, 2015).
Is staying calm all the time the goal?
The goal is a system that raises activation when a demand arrives and lowers it when the demand ends. Both branches of the autonomic nervous system are active at all times, and demand shifts the balance (McCorry, 2007). Load reactions during work are expected. Recovery is what reverses them (Meijman and Mulder, 1998).
How does work keep the sympathetic branch engaged after hours?
Through thought. Worry about tomorrow and rumination about today keep the stress response running outside the working day (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006). Across 60 studies, this perseverative cognition went with higher heart rate, higher cortisol, and lower heart rate variability (Ottaviani and colleagues, 2016).
What can I do to recover after work?
Reach psychological detachment, which means time with no thoughts about work tasks or problems (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2007). The other recovery experiences in the same research are relaxation, mastery, and control over your time. An activity that demands attention and skill is the mastery experience in that research, and detachment buffers the effect of job stressors on strain (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2015).
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