For many Australians, the ability to leave work at the office has quietly become one of the hardest parts of the job. Work follows people home through phones, laptops, and a habit of mind that doesn’t switch off at the end of the day. The pressure to stay available, stay responsive, and manage an always-growing to-do list has made the boundary between work life and personal life thinner than it has ever been. When that boundary disappears, the cost reaches into everything outside of work. Fortunately, that boundary can be rebuilt and it doesn’t require a career change to do it.
The Real Cost of Always Being "On"
The failure to leave work at the office doesn’t announce itself as a crisis. It starts as checking your phone after dinner, replying to one message, refreshing your inbox before bed. Then you notice you’re not sleeping well. You’re snapping at people you love. You sit down to do something you enjoy and can’t stop thinking about a task you haven’t finished. Forty-six per cent of Australians report that the line between their work life and personal life has become increasingly blurred, and nearly three-quarters check work communications outside of office hours.
Left unaddressed, that pattern can develop into something more serious. Work-related stress is the second most compensated illness or injury in Australia, after musculoskeletal disorders, and it sits on a range that runs from smaller tensions through to burnout. People may not notice where they are on that range until they’ve already travelled further along it than they’d like. For people who work from home, the risk is worse: there is no office door to close, no physical separation between the working environment and the rest of life. The workday continues until something stops it, and sometimes there isn’t anything to stop it.
Create a Shutdown Routine That Signals the End of the Working Day
The brain does not switch off just because the clock says it’s time to leave work at the office. Without a clear signal, it keeps running in the background, chewing over unfinished tasks even while you’re trying to rest. Psychologists call this the Zeigarnik Effect: the brain holds on to incomplete work until it has somewhere to put it. A shutdown routine releases this hold by recording everything that’s unfinished and putting it in a plan.
About 15 minutes before you finish for the day, do a final check of your inbox, write a to-do list for tomorrow, and capture any loose threads you’re worried about forgetting. When you’ve written down what needs to happen next, your brain stops generating reminders about it. Offloading tomorrow’s priorities onto paper reduces after-hours overthinking.
Then do something physical and deliberate to mark the end of your day like cleaning your space, packing your bag, or getting your jacket ready, before shutting down your computer and turning off your screen. Acts like these give your brain the signals it needs to start switching over out of work mode.
Use Your Commute as a Mental Airlock
Your commute is more useful than you might give it credit for. Your trip between the two is a built-in transition that can do real psychological work, if you let it.
On a train ride home, that shift happens more easily because your hands and eyes are free. Listening to a podcast, reading a book, or messaging a friend all pull attention away from the day and move it toward the rest of your life. If you drive, you can get the same benefit from music or a podcast, or by taking a quieter route home even if it takes longer.
For people who work from home, the commute doesn’t exist unless you build one. A 15-minute walk before you start your day and another when you finish can provide the same mental transition a commute does. Changing out of your work clothes as soon as the day ends is another cue you can use to send your brain the sensory signals it needs to mark the end of work.
Your Phone Is Not Your Boss
Your phone is pulling you back into work mode every time a notification appears, even if you don’t respond to it. The fix is straightforward: turn off work email and messaging app alerts after office hours. Logging out of these platforms means you have to log back in, slowing you down enough to make checking a deliberate choice rather than a reflex. Australia introduced the right to disconnect in August 2024 partly because this pressure had become a recognised health issue, and roughly one in five workers using platforms like Slack or Teams were checking notifications every hour outside of work.
If you work from home and find it hard to switch off, removing work apps from your phone’s home screen creates a practical barrier between your personal time and your working environment. Changing what your manager or boss expects of you after hours is harder, but it starts with smaller steps than a direct conversation. An out-of-office message that notes your office hours or simply not responding until the next morning and letting the pattern speak for itself, can gradually shift their expectations.
Schedule Something Worth Coming Home For
One of the quieter reasons people work late is that there’s nothing pulling them away. When personal life is unscheduled and shapeless, work expands to fill it. Scheduling something worth coming home for gives you a reason to leave the office on time and a reason to stay present once you do.
Without anything waiting for you, staying late feels like dedication. With something waiting, leaving on time feels like the obvious choice. It doesn’t need to be ambitious: a walk, a meal you’re cooking, a show you’ve been saving. The point is that your personal time has enough pull to compete with the pull of an open laptop. You want a personal life without packing your schedule.
Recognise When Work Stress Has Become a Health Issue
Not everyone who struggles to switch off just needs better habits. For some people, the inability to leave work at the office is a symptom of something that better habits and phone settings cannot fix. Work stress that has crossed into burnout or clinical anxiety doesn’t respond to to-do lists and notification settings, and pushing harder often makes it worse.
If you’ve been feeling this way for weeks rather than days and self-care strategies haven’t shifted it, that’s the point to seek support rather than push through. A GP can refer you to a psychologist, and your workplace may have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which provides confidential counselling at no cost. Feeling overwhelmed by work stress isn’t a character flaw. It’s a health issue, and it responds to treatment.
Mental health first aid training teaches you to recognise when stress has crossed a line, in yourself and in the people around you. For anyone who has watched work quietly hollow out their life outside of it, enrolling in mental health first aid training could be how that changes.
FAQs
Is Burnout Recognised as a Medical Condition?
Not exactly. The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. It appears in the International Classification of Diseases as a reason someone might seek healthcare, but not as a diagnosable illness in its own right.
Who Do Australia's Right to Disconnect Laws Apply To?
Most Australian employees. The law covers employees under the Fair Work Act, which includes most private sector workers and federal public servants. State public servants in some states fall under state industrial relations systems and may not have the same protections.
Does Taking Annual Leave Actually Reduce Burnout?
It helps, but the effect doesn’t last long. Most people find the benefits wear off within a couple of weeks of returning, and if nothing about the job has changed, sometimes sooner. A holiday can give you breathing room, but it won’t fix the habits and conditions that made switching off difficult in the first place.
References
Safe Work Australia. (2025). Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025. Safe Work Australia. https://data.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/insights/key-whs-statistics-australia/latest-release
Safe Work Australia. (2024). Psychological health and safety in the workplace. Safe Work Australia. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/media-centre/media-release/new-report-psychological-health-australian-workplaces
Fair Work Ombudsman. (2024). Right to disconnect. Australian Government. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/hours-of-work-breaks-and-rosters/right-to-disconnect
Fair Work Ombudsman. (2024, August 26). Right to disconnect begins today [Media release]. Australian Government. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/2024-media-releases/august-2024/20240826-right-to-disconnect-stage-1-media-release
Fair Work Commission. (2024). What is the right to disconnect? Australian Government. https://www.fwc.gov.au/issues-we-help/right-disconnect-disputes/what-right-disconnect
World Health Organization. (2019, May 28). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
World Health Organization. (2024). Burn-out an occupational phenomenon [FAQ]. https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon
Allianz Australia. (2021). Future Thriving Workplaces Report. Cited in: The Brag. (2021, September 2). Australians are struggling to find a work-life balance during the pandemic. https://thebrag.com/australians-mental-health/
Slack & YouGov. (2022, December 12). 2022 Holiday Season Survey. Slack. https://slack.com/blog/collaboration/relax-and-recharge-holidays
people2people Recruitment. (2024). Digital boundaries in the Australian workplace. Cited in: HRD Australia. (2024). Over 50% of Australians urged to check emails outside work hours. https://www.hcamag.com/au/specialisation/employment-law/over-50-of-australians-urged-to-check-emails-outside-work-hours-report/483719
Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1–85.
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21688924/
Syrek, C. J., Weigelt, O., Peifer, C., & Antoni, C. H. (2017). Zeigarnik’s sleepless nights: How unfinished tasks at the end of the week impair employee sleep on the weekend through rumination. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
Australia Institute. (2024). Unpaid overtime in Australia. Cited in: Reuters/Irish Examiner. (2024, August 26). Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails and calls after hours. https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-41463439.html
