The Quiet Burnout of the Work-From-Home Era

I have been working remotely for nearly a decade, long before the pandemic turned the home office into a global workplace experiment. Over the years, I’ve often wondered what exactly I might be missing: is it the water cooler conversations, the peeking into other’s lunch boxes, the easy camaraderie of colleagues, the energy of a shared workspace? And what should I be grateful for? An AQI of 50, the absence of a commute, or the freedom to shape my sourdough boules even as I shape my workday?

When offices shut down during the pandemic of 2020, working from home was seen as a welcome respite for most, a long-awaited correction to rigid office culture. Schedules became flexible. Work wear was stowed away, pyjamas became the norm. Work could, in theory, fit around life rather than the other way around. But as the novelty wore off, a different reality began to emerge: one where the boundaries between work and personal life grew increasingly difficult to maintain.

Five years later, the reality is more complex.

A 2023 Deloitte India survey on workplace well-being found that nearly 50% of professionals reported experiencing burnout, with blurred work-life boundaries emerging as one of the biggest contributors. Another study by Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that remote and hybrid employees often struggle to switch off, with many reporting that the workday extends well beyond traditional office hours.

For some professionals, the home office has quietly become a place where work never quite ends. Without the physical rituals that once marked the workday - commuting, leaving the office, making after-office plans, even dressing for work - the boundary between professional and personal time has become increasingly porous.

Animator Deepti Megh, who runs a design and animation studio from home with her partner, says the lack of structure can slowly erode mental wellbeing. “I have ADHD, so I struggle with structure, which is a sort of given in an office space,” she says. “Moreover, since I am my own boss, I often end up working in my pyjamas – and that slowly messes with your mental health.”

To cope, she has built deliberate rituals into her mornings: working out, showering, using an app to go through an itemised list of tasks before sitting down to work. “This just helps me feel grounded,” she says.

But what she misses most is something many remote workers have quietly lost - the presence of other people.

“Sometimes it’s just me and my partner staring at each other’s faces all day,” she says. “I miss having other creative people around to bounce ideas off.”

In her earlier workplace, it was precisely these informal rhythms - shared lunches, conversations over coffee, the end-of-day euphoria - that created a natural boundary around work.  She cannot wait to people up. “I hope to get to a place where our practice grows big enough to be able to hire more people, bring in new partners, create the sort of environment I miss,” says Megh.

The sense of a clearly defined workday cannot be underestimated – it is a thing that office routines once provided almost automatically.

Mihika Mirchandani, who has worked in the non-profit sector, says working from home dissolved all boundaries, made ‘leaving’ the work place impossible. “You feel like you have all the time to work, so you work very slowly and then work piles up, eating into your leisure hours. The time you avoid work doesn’t feel like earned leisure, it feels like low-grade panic. And when you could be relaxing you’re guilty and working in a frenzy. All because there is no distinction between work and non-work,” she says.

That quiet anxiety resulting from a constant inability to switch off  is becoming a defining emotional experience of remote work. For some, the problem is the endless stream of digital communication that accompanies working online. In many workplaces today, burnout is not always caused by an increase in workload but by the constant presence of work itself - on laptops, phones and messaging platforms.

Book publicist Aarti Talwar describes burnout as a kind of permanent exhaustion.

“I was perpetually tired,” she says. “I had no energy to prioritise tasks because I was constantly stuck in the loop of trying to finish all my work so I could relax. Of course that never seemed to happen, because that’s not how ‘work’ works.”

Over time, she says, work began to trigger stress responses. “Calendar invites brought stress. Every notification on my phone felt like work or pressure and there was no escaping it.”

What intensified the burnout was the inability to meet people IRL, have conversations with colleagues over coffee or lunch breaks. The result was a gradual withdrawal.

“I started to quietly quit; I didn’t feel like meeting friends” she says. “No one really knew what was wrong.”

For podcaster Mohua Chinnappa too, the biggest change has been social.

“I have become lonelier,” she says simply. “And lazy to forge connections. I can’t be in groups any longer.”

For others, the flexibility of remote work has significantly improved daily life.

“I focus better when I’m at home without the noise and socialising of an office. I also find time to work out, eat a good lunch, take a power nap if needed,” says Suvasini Sridharan, a content editor.

Creativity coach Raju Tai echoes that sentiment. “WFH gave me time for my creativity, and as a sensitive person, it allowed me to work while taking breaks, walks, naps to process everything. Of course, sometimes work bled into every crevice of life, but it eventually compelled me to create better boundaries. Most importantly, it saved me from the sensory assault of the daily commute, and instead of spending my precious days acting like a good employee I became a more competent human overall.”

Advertising professional Kaushek Haldar says working remotely allows him to find inspiration outside traditional office environments.

“I work from coffee shops, bookstores, homes of friends,” he says. “The change in environment helps me approach a project differently.”

He believes that inspiration doesn’t follow a 9-5 schedule. Sometimes even being in a different environment helps you notice things you otherwise wouldn’t. But even he admits that flexibility comes with hidden costs.

“I have seen boundaries being blurred, especially for non-creative roles,” he says. “It has taken an active effort to tell people that I am not working on certain days.”

For market research professional Anthony Pais* ,  the pressure of the demands of the industry have been intensified despite remote work..

“I am very grateful for remote work, and can continue working uninterrupted, but the industry is going through major changes and the stress of delivering more for less means people end up working way longer hours, with the added pressure of structural job losses for ourselves and for the most junior ones in our teams.”

For M. Ashanthi*, a communications manager at an education NGO, the loss of everyday social interactions is a deeper organisational problem. “The point of the office was never work – it was meeting (and often suffering) people you work together with. In that sense, ‘going to office’ is a ginormous human experiment,” she says. In the absence of that, she believes there is no way to get a psycho-social layout of your colleagues and decide who you want to be friends with and who you would rather avoid. “In the end, what we have lost when we stopped ‘going to office’ is this ‘learning about each other’ – and this has burnt us out more than the workload”, she says.

She blames the pandemic for destroying some systems that were in place. “Sure, some were faulty, but companies were not very imaginative in finding ways to put new systems in place.” She misses her earlier days as a journalist when she worked on a hybrid model by her own design. Post COVID, when work was fully remote, she met no one and then realised the importance of water cooler conversations. “When you are fully remote, even if your organisation has 300 employees all over the country, you never form a relationship with people; conflict is therefore high, and so is alienation, especially when you are the one of the few senior staff members among loads of Gen Zs.” For her, the disappearance of informal conversations has had lasting consequences.

The challenge for organisations, Ashanthi feels, is not simply whether employees work from home or from an office; ultimately work is done when you are in a frame of mind to do it.

“The challenge is to rethink off-sites and make them count. Companies need to think beyond token Mental Health experts who come once a year and give a talk or an HR expert who makes you play organisation games like trust fall which are from another era.”

To her, hybrid still looks like the best model – go to office 2-3 days, WFH the rest of the days. “Otherwise, how are we going to make people ‘people’ together?”

The conversation around burnout also reveals another irony: many professionals who work from offices every day find the lack of flexibility itself exhausting. Roshni Pai*, who works in a not-for-profit environment philanthropy organisation in Mumbai, says rigid office policies can create their own form of burnout.

“It is funnily not so much the quantum of work but the lack of flexibility. Like my travel time is 1.5 hours one way. I can't afford to stay close to work because of the rents. I have, at times a lot of household errands which cannot be done over a weekend but I can't do them during the weekday as my organisation doesn't believe in WFH – or that people can work remotely and still perform, and you don't have to have hawk eyes on them.”

The answer clearly lies somewhere between the two extremes.

“I think hybrid is great. 3-4 days office, 1-2 days remote. It allows for productivity gains especially in tech- heavy places like Bangalore and Mumbai where the commute is torturous,” says Aanya Basu, a finance professional. Both home and office offer different things, when it comes to work, she adds.

“Being in an office means less isolation, more visibility, ease of networking and building  professional camaraderie,” says Aanya, adding, “For women in more traditional set ups, an office gives home and work a clear demarcation. Else she might be expected to fulfil all household responsibilities while taking meetings from home whereas the husband is almost entitled to a 100% focus on work.”

On the other hand, working from home helps address personal priorities, but often, “out of sight is out of mind” when it comes to networking and building camaraderie.

For software engineer Sonal*, remote work has evolved over time.

“Initially during the pandemic, work-life balance was wrecked. There were no boundaries between working hours and personal time. It was all intermingled, probably due to the uncertain times and getting used to that setting as well. Now, I feel working from home has improved my work-life balance. I can do things at my pace. If I need time-off during the day, I can take that and extend working hours in the evening.”

The paradox of work today is that while some employees struggle to switch off in remote jobs, others are still struggling to persuade their organisations to trust them with even limited flexibility.

With no real ‘office job’ in sight on my sky island at 7000 feet, remote work may well be here to stay. But I still find myself returning to the same question: what does one gain, and what does one lose, when work moves into the home? For some professionals, the freedom is invaluable. For others, the blurred boundaries are exhausting. For many, the answer may lie somewhere in between—finding ways to preserve the flexibility of remote work while rebuilding the boundaries that once made it possible to switch off.

(*Name changed upon request)