The 9 to 5 is over: Welcome to the "infinite workday"

Working 9 to 5 was once a way to make a living, in the parlance of Dolly Parton, but the workday today? It never ends.

Why it matters: That's the startling finding of a report out Tuesday from Microsoft on the "infinite workday," which starts before many knowledge workers get out of bed, ends late at night and stretches into the weekend.

• "The modern workday for many has no clear start or finish," write the authors of the Work Trend Index Special Report, which looked at anonymized data from millions of global users of Microsoft 365's productivity apps like Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, etc.

By the numbers: It's difficult to stay focused during formal business hours. Knowledge workers are interrupted by a ping from an app — such as email, calendar or messaging — every 1.75 minutes, or 275 times, during the official eight-hour work day, finds the analysis, which looked at data from 12-month period ending February 2025.

• Meanwhile, as workers are more distributed around the country and world, thanks to the rise of remote work, 1 in 5 meetings are now happening outside "regular" work hours.
• Meetings after 8pm are up 16% from last year, and the average employee now sends or receives 50-plus messages outside of core business hours.
• These folks aren't sleeping in come the morning, either. A "broad base" of workers are up at 6am working, says Colette Stallbaumer, cofounder of Microsoft WorkLab and the general manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Zoom in: A lot of work happens on the fly, according to the authors. 57% of meetings are ad hoc calls without a calendar invite and 1 in 10 scheduled meetings are booked at the last minute.

• "For many, the workday now feels like navigating chaos — reacting to others' priorities and losing focus on what matters most," they write.

The big picture: Even as more companies are pushing people back to the office, the rise of remote work has normalized working around the clock wherever you are.

• "People are figuring out how to do their job and work when it works best for them," Stallbaumer says. That may mean people jump back online in the evening after putting kids to bed or catch up on the weekend.
• The downside of such "flexibility" is that the workday never ends.

💭 Our thought bubble: The inability to unplug is a surefire way to burn out a workforce.

The bottom line: Microsoft argues that artificial intelligence can help offset some of this work, but so far it doesn't seem to be making a dent.