Behaviour, books and research · 19 October 2026
When rest does not feel restful
Leaving work and recovering from its demands are not always the same event.
Billy Craig, How I Lost My Mum, and Then My Mind — A bad night and the following day.
The workday can continue after work
The laptop is closed, but the unfinished conversation continues. A person may be sitting still while anticipating tomorrow, revisiting a mistake or wondering whether another message will arrive. Counting this simply as inactive time misses the experience, although it does not tell us how many calories were used.
From How I Lost My Mum, and Then My Mind
Billy Craig, How I Lost My Mum, and Then My Mind — A bad night and the following day.
Sleep was already going wrong before the night of the attack. I was waking early, thinking about work and struggling to get back to sleep. Sometimes I ended up on the sofa. That belonged to the account before I had any reason to describe myself as someone who had experienced panic.
What detachment research found
Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah combined 91 independent samples involving 38,124 employees. Greater psychological detachment from work was associated with less exhaustion and better self-reported sleep and wellbeing. Average associations with physiological stress indicators were not significant, and results varied across studies. [1]
These associations do not prove that instructing someone to switch off will improve their health. The analysis also linked work demands and resources with detachment. Recovery is not simply a personality skill that employees either possess or lack. [1]
Make room for the circumstances
Consider an illustrative worker expected to remain available all evening. Advice to stop checking messages may conflict with the actual demands of the job. An agreed response window or a clearer handover would address a different part of the problem. Whether those changes help should be checked with the person rather than presumed.
For someone facing bereavement or financial insecurity, an empty diary does not remove the source of concern. Rest should not become another task they can fail by continuing to feel distressed. Support may need to include practical help and attention to persistent sleep problems.
Being still is not the only way to recover
An enjoyable activity, quiet company or time alone may fit different people and different days. There is no need to declare one form of leisure universally restorative. The relevant questions include whether it is freely chosen, what demands it introduces and how the person feels afterwards.
A useful account distinguishes physical inactivity, sleep, subjective recovery and psychological detachment. These overlap, but substituting one measure for all the others can conceal the problem we wanted to understand.
Why this matters for EPK
EPK—Energy per Kilogram—should consider recovery when evaluating a fuelling approach, while resisting the temptation to turn every difficult evening into an inferred calorie deficit. Nourishment cannot resolve an unreasonable workload or remove grief.
A study could record sleep, work demands and perceived recovery alongside dietary information and function. That would help identify whether the proposed approach makes daily life easier, without claiming that a wearable or food log measures everything that recovery involves.
Related behaviour articles
Research and guidance
Explore more studies in the research library.
Related working papers
Read the relevant PDFs: EPK–001 to 007 are the revised version 1.2 papers; EPK–008 to 010 are version 1.0 supplements. Earlier PDFs and DOI records remain on the paper archive.