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We used to know when the workday started. And when it ended.

Now? Not so much.

According to Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index Special Report: Breaking Down the Infinite Workday, 40% of employees are already online by 6 a.m. A third are still answering emails at 10 p.m. And one in five is working on weekends.

This isn’t a policy. It’s not a leadership choice. It’s not even necessarily intentional.

It’s just what’s happening.

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What makes this even harder is that work isn’t just longer—it’s faster.

Email starts the day, but by 8 a.m., real-time chat takes over and the tempo accelerates. Microsoft found that the average worker now receives 117 emails and 153 Teams chats every day. Mass messages are up. One-on-one threads are down.

Flexibility has opened the door for asynchronous work. But without clarity on expectations, it’s also created a culture of immediate response. Everyone works on their own schedule, yet somehow, everyone expects everyone else to be instantly available.

We’re not just working longer hours—we’re working in a constant state of interruption.

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Because if flexibility really worked the way we imagined, we’d be using our best hours for our best thinking. But the data tells a different story. At 11 a.m., during what should be peak mental clarity, meetings, messages, and app-switching all spike. Workers are interrupted every two minutes.

We’ve unintentionally allowed our most productive hours to be consumed by reactive coordination. Focus hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been displaced by a culture of urgency.

And nowhere is that urgency more visible than in how we meet. Meetings were already a pain point in many organizations even before Covid. Back then, calendar and conference room capacity governed meeting planning. Now that digital tools have removed those limits, we simply add everyone—and move even faster.

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We see the result in the third work peak of the triple peak day, which is no longer a pandemic-era glitch. Evening meetings are up 16%, and a third of workers return to email after 10 p.m. Document activity (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) spikes on weekends—when the noise dies down and people finally find time to think.

Flexibility, once a promise of balance, now too often means always being available. And when everyone works on their own rhythm—but still expects immediate response—the result is a system with no real off switch. Without rest. Without recovery.

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This is the moment when many turn to AI with hope.

And yes, it can help. AI can handle the clutter: drafting emails, summarizing notes, scheduling meetings. But if we treat that freed-up time as space to do even more, we’re not fixing the problem—we’re accelerating it.

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The future of work will be shaped by technology. But to truly work for people, it will need to be defined by people.

LINK

I’d be curious folks’ thoughts and experienced here. There’s definitely been a shift in how work is done coming out of Covid and apps like Microsoft Teams, where people have that not only on their laptops, but their phones as well.

I prefer to be a personable person in the workplace. Maybe it’s just the nature of my role in industry where you can’t be a desk body. You have to know how to interact with various personalities to get things done for the different teams and business units. So I miss the in person meetings. I hate when I new engineer joins a group and is part of planning and meetings, yet don’t even know what they look like and can’t look them in the eye for a casual conversation. Sure…the online meetings are great for folks calling in who office out of different locations, and the screen sharing for them is very helpful. But it would be nice to know that Jim or Jane isn’t just playing candy crush while someone is giving some important facts that are critical to the project.

The early hours and after hours stuff, yes, there is an increase since Covid, but at least in the setting I work in, I don’t necessarily feel required to respond immediately. Sometimes I do if I have an answer or insight that might be able to put an issue to bed or help, but I always feel a 8pm email with a question can wait till the next day. If there’s some dire emergency that someone needs my attention ASAP, they can call my cell. I’ll pick up.

One thing I’ve found that does irk me is some high school teachers and college professors have used this technology of availability to push things on students that we didn’t have to deal with when I was in school. Didn’t have to turn in some assignment online by 11:59pm. Certainly not in high school. So I feel bad for kids who end up with teachers and professors who make it tough for them to unplug and just handle after school hours shite the way we did.

Again, thoughts from others? Sorry for the length, but I do find discussions around how the workplace (and schooling) coming out of Covid has drastically changed. Some good, some bad, in my personal experience.