The “Infinite Workday” Means Collaboration Never EndsThe “Infinite Workday” Means Collaboration Never Ends
Microsoft research shows that workers are deluged with endless emails and messages – and are working longer hours to stay on top of it all.
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During the 2020 lockdown, there was a commercial for Real California Milk in which a remotely working/schooling family was deluged with notifications from the moment they awoke, stumbled to the kitchen in their pajamas, then sat down to try and take a moment of dairy-powered zen before addressing all the pop-up alerts, pings and messages. The ad was a perfect encapsulation of the dilemma remote workers found themselves in: with no hard transitions between work spaces and private spaces, work bled into the hours surrounding a "standard" workday. And indeed, by the end of 2020, research was supporting the commercial's general vibe:
"It is easier to unplug when you work onsite at an office," she said. "Leaving your office at the end of the workday creates a natural boundary, and traveling home provides the time you need to unwind and decompress. It is hard to set up boundaries if your office is in your bedroom or at the kitchen table. It is easy to check one more e-mail, add more details to a presentation or return a few phone calls to colleagues."
Five years on, the researchers at Microsoft have introduced a phrase that perfectly encapsulates this post-lockdown, mental state of white collar employment: "the infinite workday."
Just before the long holiday break, Microsoft broke down some of its findings from its 2025 Work Trend Annual Index and concluded, based on "based on trillions of globally aggregated and anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals," that the decoupling of workers' working hours from either time zones or office schedules had led to a near-constant deluge of messaging to be managed from the time people wake up to the time they go to bed. Among Microsoft's relevant findings:
40% of people who are online at 6 am are reviewing email
The average worker receives 117 emails daily—most of them reviewed in under 60 seconds.
Mass emails with 20+ recipients are up 7% in the past year, while one-on-one threads are on the decline (-5%)
The average worker receives 153 Teams messages per day
Messages per person are up 6%
The average worker goes only two minutes between interruptions from meetings, new emails or Teams messages
57% of meetings are called on an ad hoc basis with no calendar invitation or prep period
Half of all meetings take place during 9-11 a.m. and 1-3 p.m. -- the times when people would typically be more productive (according to biometric data) but are now deprived of a chance to do deep-focus work at their mental peaks
The average employee now sends or receives more than 50 messages outside of core business hours
By 10 pm, nearly a third (29%) of active workers have returned to working their way through their inboxes
The data points to one conclusion: How we work is no longer working effectively. There should be no reason for people to log on early or stay up late cleaning out their inbox.
Microsoft recommended some technological fixes for this flood of workplace communication and the lack of time for deep focus -- "By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution."
What should be added to this recommendation is that workplace leaders will need to come up with new best practices. After all, those fast decisions rely on being adequately informed, and that sort of information used to ocme from status meetings and reports. So it will be on humans to figure out how and where to draw the line with automating tedious tasks, and how to retain and act on the information they used to acquire via the churn of regular data chores.
In addition to figuring out how to work best with AI -- you know, in those leisurely two-minute stretches between interruptions -- workplace leaders also have to figure out where and how to change human habits. After all, nobody would be scrolling through their inbox at 6 a.m. if they didn't feel as if they had to. It will be on us to figure out how to slam down hard beginnings and ends to the infinite workday, before the AIs decide how we should work.
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