![]() Other forms of commuting such as public transit or carpooling may also provide opportunities to socialize. To help enhance work detachment and relaxation during the commute, commuters could try to avoid ruminating about the workday and instead focus on personally fulfilling uses of the commute time, such as listening to music or podcasts, or calling a friend. Our preliminary findings align with related research suggesting that those who have returned to the workplace might benefit from seeking to use their commute to relax as much as possible. Our findings suggest that remote workers may benefit from creating their own form of commute to provide liminal space for recovery and transition - such as a 15-minute walk to mark the beginning and end of the workday. How remote workers can create a commute experience ![]() However, on days when commutes were more stressful than usual, they reported less psychological detachment from work and less relaxation during the commute. We found that on days with longer-than-average commutes, people reported higher levels of psychological detachment from work and were more relaxed during the commute. Our study also confirms that day-to-day variations in commutes predict the ability to do so. Most of the workers in this study reported using the commute's liminal space to both mentally transition from work to home roles and to start psychologically recovering from the demands of the workday. The employees completed morning and evening surveys asking about the characteristics of their commutes, whether they "shut off" from work and relaxed during the commute and whether they felt emotionally exhausted when they got home. In an unpublished follow-up study we conducted ourselves, we examined a week of commutes of 80 university employees to test our conceptual model. On the other hand, longer commutes might give people more time to detach and recover. We found that, on the one hand, more attention to the act of commuting means less attention that could otherwise be put toward relaxing recovery activities like listening to music and podcasts. For instance, train commuters must devote attention to selecting their route, monitoring arrivals or departures and ensuring they get off at the right stop, whereas car commuters must devote consistent attention to driving. ![]() However, we also found that day-to-day variations may affect whether this liminal space is accessible for detachment and recovery. We focused our research on two cognitive processes: psychological detachment from the work role - mentally disengaging from the demands of work – and psychological recovery from work - rebuilding stores of mental energy used up during work.Īmerican workers have long complained about commuting but during the pandemic when remote work was required for many, some people realized they missed their commute. We reviewed research on commuting, role transitions and work recovery to develop a model of a typical American worker's commute liminal space. In our study, we wanted to learn whether the commute provides that time and space, and what the effects are when it becomes unavailable. ![]() We believe the loss of this space helps explain why many people missed their commutes. Without mentally disengaging from work, people can experience burnout. Without the ability to mentally shift gears, people experience role blurring, which can lead to stress. In our recently published conceptual study, we argue that commutes are a source of "liminal space" - a time free of both home and work roles that provides an opportunity to recover from work and mentally switch gears to home.ĭuring the shift to remote work, many people lost this built-in support for these important daily processes. This story comes from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization. ![]()
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