It’s 8 pm. Do you know where your work boundaries are?

Once upon a time, we logged off: Shut the laptop, poured wine, and watched The Office instead of living in Severance. But according to Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index, those golden days of clean-cut “office hours” are basically history.

Turns out, we’re in an era of the “infinite workday”—a world where your job doesn’t end when the clock strikes five… it just shapeshifts.

We didn’t just stretch our work hours—we erased them

But let’s be real: are we surprised? Somewhere between WhatsApp pings during dinner and “quick” calls over the weekend (which invariably begin with a well-meaning but disingenuous, “Sorry to bother you…”), We didn’t just lose having regular work hours—we entered a full-time work existence. Between WFH, hybrid everything, and our own desperation to “seem available,” many of us have become walking HR violations.

According to the report, hybrid and remote workers are now stringing together their day in bouts of convenience, setting up an early call, taking a gym break, a mid-afternoon nap (iconic), punctuated by intermittent work with a sudden burst of productivity at 9:30 pm. It’s flexible. It’s freeing. It’s… exhausting, especially for women.

Multiple surveys have shown that women, particularly working mothers, are bearing the brunt of this flexibility façade. The same “freedom” that allows for a midday grocery run also ropes you into sending out final edits at 11:47 pm—because no one wants to be the one “falling behind.”

So, what now?

Do we stage a mass digital detox and move to the hills? Tempting. But Microsoft says there is hope—and it looks a lot like intentionality. Think: using AI tools to protect your time, setting “quiet hours” on Teams (and actually respecting them), and keeping meetings limited, deliberate, and far less frequent.

Also, companies, managers, and startup bros need to stop romanticising burnout. Hustle culture? Out. Healthy boundaries with your Google Calendar? Very in.

And let’s be clear—this isn’t all doom. For many of us, the ability to start our work days later, take breaks for therapy or errands, or work from literally anywhere was a dream. The key is ensuring that dream doesn’t turn into a blurry loop scroll of half-done tasks and microwaving frozen dinners.

Maybe the future of work isn’t about returning to a nine-to-five work day—it’s about learning how to mentally log off, even if your inbox is still buzzing. Maybe it’s about redefining productivity as output, not hours. And maybe—just maybe—it’s about asking: do I really need to answer that Slack message right now, or can it wait until tomorrow?

So the next time your cursor hovers over “Reply All” at 10 pm, take a breath. Shut the screen. Pour that wine. And remember: you are not your daily task list.

Your workday may be infinite. But you are not.

Lead image: Pexels

Also read: The emotional seesaw of loving (and losing) your body

Also read: Is the Linlin Kettle the next stanley cup? The internet thinks so