Always reachable: what a phone that never switches off does to you

Dinner. The plates are still full when the phone on the table vibrates. It is lying face down, but all three people at the table know what it is. “I’ll just check whether it’s anything urgent,” you say. It is nothing urgent. It is a question from a colleague that could have waited until morning. But you reply anyway, because it only takes a minute. When you look up, the conversation at the table has moved on. Your partner says nothing. That is an answer too.

Most people who describe constant availability to me never decided on it. There was no meeting where someone said: “From today, we reply in the evenings as well.” It happened gradually. First work email on your phone, because it is practical. Then a team chat group, because it is quicker. Then the first message at nine in the evening that you answered because you happened to see it. And one day you noticed that you never really put your phone down any more.

In this post I am not going to preach about screens. I am interested in something else: what constant availability does to a mind that never switches off, to a team that sets rules without words, and to relationships at home, into which the work phone pushes its way like a third party.

A phone nobody really switched on

Constant availability is interesting precisely because hardly anyone chooses it. It is a state you slide into. Technology has removed the friction that used to set a limit all by itself: the office was closed, the phone hung on the wall, the post arrived in the morning. Today that limit is something you have to set yourself — and that is exactly what nobody taught you.

When there is no limit, a feeling takes its place. If you think your manager would expect a reply, you behave as if they do. If you see a colleague replying at eleven at night, you wonder how it looks if you do not. Nobody has asked for anything. And yet everyone follows a rule that nobody wrote.

Psychological detachment: more than a closed laptop

The German work psychologist Sabine Sonnentag has spent much of her career researching how people recover from work. One of the key concepts she developed with colleagues is psychological detachment: a state in which, in your free time, you are not only not working but also not thinking about work. Being physically at home is not enough. What matters is whether your mind is still in the office.

In a study with Ulrike-Vera Bayer, she showed that people who detached less in the evening reported more fatigue and a worse mood — and that detachment was even harder for those with a heavier workload. Later research has repeated this finding many times: detachment is not a luxury, but one of the basic ingredients of recovery.

A phone in your pocket is a particular challenge for detachment. Even when no message arrives, part of you is waiting to see whether one will. The psychologists Kostadin Kushlev and Elizabeth Dunn tested this in a simple experiment: for one week, participants were allowed to check their email only three times a day, with notifications turned off, and in the other week as often as they liked. In the week with the limit, they reported less daily stress. The effect was not dramatic, but it was clear: how often you check carries a cost in itself.

The message does not have to arrive. It is enough that it could

This is perhaps the most important finding of recent years. The researchers William Becker, Liuba Belkin and colleagues studied what the mere expectation of monitoring work email after hours does to people. It turned out that this expectation was linked to greater anxiety — regardless of how much time people actually spent on email. And something else: their partners felt worse too, and the expectation was also linked to lower satisfaction in the relationship.

The body responds not only to what happens, but also to what might happen. When you know that something may arrive at any moment that you will have to respond to, part of your nervous system stays on guard. In its milder form we call this state alertness; in its stronger form, hypervigilance. In the long run it is a bit like spending the whole evening sitting on the edge of your chair.

The team as a system: who sets the norm

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at a person within the system around them. A work team is such a system. It has unwritten rules that are often stronger than the written ones, and it has people who set those rules — mostly without knowing it.

When it comes to availability, the norm is usually set not by a manager’s instruction, but by whoever replies fastest. When one team member answers within minutes at ten at night, the standard for what it means to be “committed” shifts for everyone. Others sense that their reply the next morning suddenly looks slow. Nobody says it out loud, but everyone starts replying a little earlier. The system has reached a new balance — at a higher level of tension.

The manager plays a special role here. Even the line “no need to reply until tomorrow” under a message sent at eleven at night says two things. In words, it says you can wait. Through the time it was sent, it says that work is on someone’s mind at eleven too. People in systems generally follow what they see more than what they hear.

And just as in a family, the burden in a team is not shared out evenly. There is often someone who is “always reachable” — who knows where everything is, who answers even on holiday, without whom things grind to a halt. The system leans on them and, in doing so, slowly wears them out. I wrote about how this happens to the most conscientious people in Why it is the most responsible and reliable people who burn out.

The phone as a third party in the relationship

In systemic therapy we use the concept of a triangle: when there is tension between two people, it is often redirected onto a third — a child, a relative, work. A work phone on the bedside table can be such a third party. It is present at dinner, in bed, while you play with your child. It does not speak, and yet everyone knows it is there.

The researchers Brandon McDaniel and Sarah Coyne coined the term technoference for the everyday intrusions of technology into couple time. In their study, women who reported more frequent interruptions of this kind by their partner described more conflict over technology and lower satisfaction in the relationship. It was not about big events, but about small, repeated moments when the other person was there, but not really.

A partner who stays at the table while you reply often does not feel angry about one message. They feel something quieter: that work always comes first and that they get their turn once everything else is sorted. If they do not say it, the tension can build up and erupt over a completely different issue. I wrote about how much work belongs at home at all in How much of work belongs at home: when your partner talks about the job every evening, and about what happens to a relationship when one partner gives out in Burnout and relationships: what happens to a couple when one partner gives out.

Why you cannot simply not reply

The advice “just don’t answer” is simple and almost never works. Because the phone does not only hold messages. It also holds fear: that you will miss something important, that people will think you are less committed, that something will fall apart without you, that you will no longer be needed.

When I explore with someone where this fear comes from, an old story often appears. One person grew up in a family where they were accepted when they were useful. Another, as a child, always had to be ready, because nobody knew what the atmosphere would be like when their father got home. Christian Gostečnik describes how we carry such early emotional atmospheres into all our later relationships — including our relationship to work and to the people there who represent authority. So being reachable is not just a work habit. For many people it is a way of staying important and safe.

For entrepreneurs and the self-employed the story is often different, because the business is part of their identity and nobody else sets a limit — I wrote about this in Always on: why entrepreneurs can’t rest. Here I am more interested in the position of an employee who is part of a team and whose limits also depend on others.

What a conversation about it can sound like

A short example (composite, not a real person):

“I know I could switch off. But if I don’t check in the evening, I can’t fall asleep.”
“What do you imagine happens if you don’t check?”
“That my boss has sent something and I find out in the morning that I’ve missed it.”
“Has that ever happened?”
“Once. Two years ago.”
“And how did he react?”
A pause. “Actually, he didn’t. He said it was fine.”
“So the anger was somewhere else.”
“Yes. In me.”

A shift like this is often a beginning. When someone notices that the fear of consequences is bigger than the consequences themselves, they can start checking what really happens if they do not reply straight away. And often less happens than they expected. And when something unpleasant really does happen, it is no longer only their inner problem, but information about the system that needs to be talked about.

Exercise: one week of spoken limits

Because constant availability is kept going mainly by unspoken expectations, the main part of the exercise is to put them into words. The exercise lasts a week.

1. Write down what you think is expected of you. Who, when and for what. Separately, write down what anyone has actually told you. The two lists are often very different.
2. Check with one person. Choose the manager or colleague with whom the conversation is easiest, and ask: “Which of this is really urgent in the evening? How do you reach me if something is genuinely on fire?” The tool Sentences for setting boundaries can help you find the words.
3. Agree on one exception window. If switching off completely is not possible, agree on one check at a set time, or that in urgent cases people call you rather than write. A call is rare; a message can come at any moment.
4. Put your phone in another room. At least during dinner and for an hour before bed. Turn off work notifications. This is not about willpower, but about distance.
5. Notice what happens inside you. Restlessness, guilt and the urge to check are to be expected. Write them down and wait for them to pass. At the end of the week, check: did any of what you feared actually happen?

If the exercise does not work in the first week, that is not a failure. It tells you how deeply the rule is anchored. Sometimes it takes several attempts, sometimes a conversation with your manager, and sometimes a conversation with someone who helps you understand why a silent phone is so hard to bear.

When switching off is a matter of rules, not willpower

This whole post could sound as though constant availability is your personal problem, to be solved with a little discipline. It is not. It is also a question of how work is organised — and therefore also a question of rules.

France was among the first countries to recognise this in law: since 2017, larger companies there have had to put in place arrangements with their employees for the so-called right to disconnect. In 2021 the European Parliament called for a common European framework, and some countries have since adopted their own solutions. How this applies to your job, and what the rules are in Slovenia, is best explained by a trade union or the Labour Inspectorate (Inšpektorat RS za delo) — I will not go into legal detail here.

But something else matters: a law alone does not change a culture. Even where the right to disconnect is written down, a team may still hold that “real” colleagues reply in the evening. The rule only comes to life when the team starts practising it — and when the manager lives it themselves, rather than merely allowing it for others.

When availability is not the problem

It would not be fair to claim that every bit of availability outside working hours is harmful.

Some professions require being on call. Doctors, firefighters, systems engineers, parents caring for a sick child. For them, the point is not to abolish availability but to make sure it is clearly limited, recognised and followed by time to rest.

Some people prefer to blur the line between work and home. The researchers Blake Ashforth, Glen Kreiner and Mel Fugate described how people differ in whether they prefer to keep their roles separate or to integrate them. Someone may like leaving at four to pick up their child and then working for another hour in the evening. For such a person, checking email in the evening is not necessarily a burden — as long as it is their choice and not other people’s expectation.

Sometimes the problem is not work but the phone itself. If you notice that you check it even when nobody is writing to you, and that you cannot put it down without restlessness even on holiday, it is worth looking more broadly. I wrote about when this is still a habit and when it is already a problem in Phone and screen addiction: habit or problem?.

And sometimes availability is only the visible part of a deeper exhaustion. If, on top of it, you sleep badly, are irritable and nothing brings you joy any more, talk to your GP. In that case switching off alone will not be enough. In therapy, we can look at what availability gives you and what it takes away, what role you have in your team and at home, and how you could set boundaries that you will also be able to keep.

If similar tension follows you onto your holiday as well, read The holiday where you can’t switch off: why rest is not a switch.

What to remember

• Constant availability is rarely chosen. Mostly it happens gradually, because nobody stops it.
• Not working is not enough for recovery. You need psychological detachment — not thinking about work either.
• The mere expectation of being reachable is linked to more anxiety — in you and in your partner.
• In a team, the norm is often set by whoever replies fastest. The loop is broken by a spoken agreement, not by willpower.
• A work phone can be a third party in a relationship. It is worth asking your partner how they experience it.