An important part of work-life balance for knowledge workers (or employees in any field, for that matter) is recovery. Without effective recovery from work, employees are likely to face different forms of impaired wellbeing in the long run. Scholars have identified various experiences that promote recovery from work in the past. One such experience includes avoiding work-related thoughts and actions during leisure time, i.e. psychological detachment. To facilitate psychological detachment, we created a dedicated “Shutdown Ritual,” which consists of 8 simple steps to promote a mental transition from work to leisure at the end of the day. The ritual steps are based on suggested interventions and concepts from previous scientific literature. The Shutdown Ritual is embedded in a desktop application called “Shutdown Helper” to facilitate access and execution of the ritual. As an initial evaluation of this approach, we conducted a 2-week user study with 7 participants from the knowledge sector. The participants used the Shutdown Helper as part of their end-of-the-day routine during the study period. Data was collected during and after the study (e.g. through post-study interviews). Among the variety of findings from our data analysis, we have found certain commonalities and differences regarding user needs for a detachment ritual. For example, creating a tasklist has been found to be a useful measure for all participants, but the execution of this process differs from one user to another. The effectiveness of the remaining steps in the Shutdown Ritual has been found to be dependent on individual work routines and traits of users. Regarding the features of the Shutdown Helper application, users demand a more advanced tasklist (including prioritisation and seperation of tasks according to domains), automation of certain steps, and reminders to do the Shutdown Ritual. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the relevance and potential for a dedicated ritual and application to promote psychological detachment for knowledge workers. Future research can draw on the findings from this work to develop this approach for detachment further.

Student: Ashly Kolenchery
Date: Feb-Aug 2022
Masters Thesis