Notes
These notes give the sources behind the claims in each chapter, and say where I'm giving my own interpretation. The book isn't medical or psychological advice. If work is affecting your health, your GP is the person to ask, and if you're being treated badly at work, ACAS is where to start. The examples throughout, the Thursday meeting, the roundabout, the shoe and the hamster, the boiler, the March tab, the drive with the empty seat, are invented to illustrate and aren't drawn from real people.
Studies were checked on 26 September 2026 by reading their published abstracts. None was read in full, and none carried a retraction or correction notice at that date. Where a study is a survey at one point in time, it describes an association and can't show what causes what, and I've tried to say so each time. Diary studies that follow the same people over days can say more about order, but not about cause.
Chapter 1. No sources. The terms are the book's own.
Chapter 3. Cropley, Michalianou, Pravettoni and Millward, "The relation of post-work ruminative thinking with eating behaviour", Stress and Health 28, 2012, pages 23 to 30. 268 full-time white-collar workers, cross-sectional. Querstret and Cropley, "Exploring the relationship between work-related rumination, sleep quality, and work-related fatigue", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 17, 2012, pages 341 to 353. 719 adult workers, online questionnaire, cross-sectional. Firoozabadi, Uitdewilligen and Zijlstra, "Solving problems or seeing troubles? A day-level study on the consequences of thinking about work on recovery and well-being, and the moderating role of self-regulation", European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 27, 2018, pages 629 to 641. 171 employees over five days. The paper test is mine.
Chapter 4. Sonnentag and Bayer, "Switching off mentally: predictors and consequences of psychological detachment from work during off-job time", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 10, 2005, pages 393 to 414. 87 people over three days. Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, "A meta-analysis on antecedents and outcomes of detachment from work", Frontiers in Psychology 7, 2017, article 2072. 91 samples, 38,124 employees, correlational. Hahn, Binnewies, Sonnentag and Mojza, "Learning how to recover from job stress: effects of a recovery training program on recovery, recovery-related self-efficacy, and well-being", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 16, 2011, pages 202 to 216. 95 people, quasi-experimental with a waitlist. Karabinski, Haun, Nübold, Wendsche and Wegge, "Interventions for improving psychological detachment from work: a meta-analysis", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 26, 2021, pages 224 to 242. 30 studies, 3,725 participants, average d of 0.36. Sonnentag and Fritz, "Recovery from job stress: the stressor-detachment model as an integrative framework", Journal of Organizational Behavior 36, 2015, pages S72 to S103, a review, for the general picture.
Chapter 5. Syrek, Weigelt, Peifer and Antoni, "Zeigarnik's sleepless nights: how unfinished tasks at the end of the week impair employee sleep on the weekend through rumination", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 22, 2017, pages 225 to 238. 59 employees, 357 matched Friday and Monday observations over twelve weeks. The pan on the hob and the claim that the itch is about the loop rather than the problem are mine.
Chapter 6. No research sources. The earlier book referred to is It's already over. The argument is mine.
Chapter 7. Repetti, "Effects of daily workload on subsequent behavior during marital interaction: the roles of social withdrawal and spouse support", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57, 1989, pages 651 to 659. 33 air traffic controllers and 27 wives, three days. PubMed gives initials only, so the surname stands alone. Schulz, Cowan, Cowan and Brennan, "Coming home upset: gender, marital satisfaction, and the daily spillover of workday experience into couple interactions", Journal of Family Psychology 18, 2004, pages 250 to 263. 82 people from 42 couples, three days. Story and Repetti, "Daily occupational stressors and marital behavior", Journal of Family Psychology 20, 2006, pages 690 to 700. 43 couples, five days. The distinction between announced and unannounced withdrawal is mine.
Chapter 8. Meier and Cho, "Work stressors and partner social undermining: comparing negative affect and psychological detachment as mechanisms", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 24, 2019, pages 359 to 372. A five-wave study of 470 people and a multisource study of 131. Bakker, Demerouti and Dollard, "How job demands affect partners' experience of exhaustion: integrating work-family conflict and crossover theory", Journal of Applied Psychology 93, 2008, pages 901 to 911. 168 dual-earner couples, cross-sectional structural model. The earlier book referred to is It wasn't about you. The parcel is mine.
Chapter 9. Sonnentag, Binnewies and Mojza, "Staying well and engaged when demands are high: the role of psychological detachment", Journal of Applied Psychology 95, 2010, pages 965 to 976. 309 human service employees over twelve months. Also cited in The work will still be there. Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, as above, for the contextual performance and creativity findings, which the abstract reports as significant and negative without giving sizes. Sonnentag and Bayer, as above.
Chapter 10. Syrek and colleagues, as above, for the three-month finding. The claim that the passenger changes name is mine.
Chapter 11. Belkin, Becker and Conroy, "The invisible leash: the impact of organizational expectations for email monitoring after-hours on employee resources, well-being, and turnover intentions", Group and Organization Management 45, 2020, pages 709 to 740. 570 working adults. Verified for The work will still be there from the Crossref abstract and not re-fetched for this book. The earlier books referred to are The work will still be there and Look up.
Chapter 12. Cropley and colleagues and Firoozabadi and colleagues, as above. The booked half hour is my suggestion.
Chapter 13. Story and Repetti, as above. Bakker and colleagues, as above. The earlier book referred to is Tell someone. The distinction between the telling and the rerun with an audience, and the bounded telling, are mine.
Chapter 14. Fritz and Sonnentag, "Recovery, health, and job performance: effects of weekend experiences", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 10, 2005, pages 187 to 199. 87 emergency service workers, three measurement points. Sonnentag and Bayer, as above. The claim that recovery doesn't bank is my reading of the day-level findings.
Chapter 15. Querstret and Cropley, Syrek and colleagues, Cropley and colleagues, and Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, as above. Demsky, Fritz, Hammer and Black, "Workplace incivility and employee sleep: the role of rumination and recovery experiences", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 24, 2019, pages 228 to 240. 699 US Forest Service employees, cross-sectional. The earlier book referred to is Nothing gets solved at three in the morning.
Chapter 16. Bakker and colleagues, as above. The earlier book referred to is Look up. Everything else in the chapter is my observation.
Chapter 17. Sonnentag, Binnewies and Mojza, Fritz and Sonnentag, and Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, as above. The mechanism of borrowed attention is mine.
Chapter 18. Syrek and colleagues, as above. Bono, Glomb, Shen, Kim and Koch, "Building positive resources: effects of positive events and positive reflection on work stress and health", Academy of Management Journal 56, 2013, pages 1601 to 1627. A three-week field study with an intervention. The abstract doesn't give the sample size or the length of the reflection. The earlier book referred to is One thing at a time. The rest of the last ten is my suggestion.
Chapter 19. Sonnentag and Fritz, "The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 12, 2007, pages 204 to 221. 930 people across the validation samples. The marker and the coat on the hook are mine.
Chapter 20. No research sources beyond those above. The earlier book referred to is The feeling will pass without help. The method is mine.
Chapter 21. Meier and Cho, as above. The earlier book referred to is Not in front of the children. The repair is my suggestion.
Chapter 22. Sonnentag and Fritz 2007 and Fritz and Sonnentag 2005, as above. The earlier books referred to are The phone can wait and Bored is fine.
Chapter 23. Gollwitzer and Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 2006, pages 69 to 119, for the when-then form. Hahn and colleagues, as above. Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle, "How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world", European Journal of Social Psychology 40, 2010, pages 998 to 1009. 96 volunteers, 82 with usable data. The rule hasn't been tested as a package and what I say to expect is my expectation.
Chapter 24. The ACAS page on bullying at work, at acas.org.uk, read on 26 September 2026. The NHS pages on stress and on the symptoms of depression in adults, at nhs.uk, read on 26 September 2026. The earlier book referred to is Nothing gets solved at three in the morning. No claim is made about the effectiveness of any service.
Chapter 25. Lally and colleagues, as above. The extension from a missed day to a missed evening is mine.
Looked up and not used. Ashforth, Kreiner and Fugate's 2000 paper on boundaries and transitions between roles, in the Academy of Management Review, had no abstract available to me and isn't cited, so the idea of a marker in chapter 19 is presented as mine. Hülsheger and colleagues' 2014 diary study of mindfulness at work and detachment, and Querstret, Cropley and Fife-Schaw's 2017 randomised trial of an online mindfulness course for work rumination, were both read and left out, because I didn't want to make a brand of one method. Thiart and Ebert's 2015 trials of online recovery training for teachers with insomnia were read and left out because the samples were clinical. Leroy's 2009 paper on attention residue is the natural source for chapter 17's mechanism, but an earlier book found its abstract unavailable and I haven't cited it. Smit's 2015 conference abstract on leaving work at work, and Cropley, Dijk and Stanley's chapter on teachers' rumination and sleep, had no abstracts available and aren't cited.