You’re done. The mental switch flipped, the last email sent, the final task checked off. Yet, an invisible force keeps your fingers hovering over the mouse. One slight twitch, a fractional scroll, a tap of the spacebar. The green dot on Slack, a tiny beacon of availability, flickers, refusing to dim. It’s 7:45 PM, a good 5 hours past your official clock-out, but in a distant timezone, a colleague or manager might still be online. And just for that remote possibility, for the ghost of a glance, you prolong your digital presence, performing for an audience that might not even be there. It’s a quiet dread, a low hum of anxiety that keeps us tethered.

This isn’t just about ‘always-on’ culture; it’s about a profound, systemic erosion of trust.

We’ve quietly, almost imperceptibly, shifted from management by results to management by perceived availability. The green active dot, intended perhaps as a simple status indicator, has become a digital leash, a tool of subtle surveillance. My own experience, I confess, isn’t spotless. Early in my career, perhaps 15 years ago, I too fell into the trap of correlating a colleague’s green dot status with their productivity. If it was grey, they must be slacking, right? It took a few painful conversations, a few glaring project successes by ‘offline’ team members, to recalibrate my own flawed assumptions. We look for tangible proof, for visible metrics, but often grasp at shadows.

It’s a peculiar form of control, isn’t it? This expectation that our machines mirror our mental state, that our physical absence from the keyboard implies an absence of thought or progress. It blurs the lines, not just between work and life, but between genuine effort and performative presence. We measure perceived ‘butt-in-seat’ time instead of actual output, sacrificing deep work and genuine creativity on the altar of responsiveness. Who cares if you solved a complex problem in 25 minutes if your dot was yellow for 55 of them?

The Sculptor’s Lesson

I remember James J., a sand sculptor I met years ago during a research trip. His work was, by its very nature, ephemeral. He’d spend 5 hours, sometimes 15 hours, meticulously crafting vast, intricate castles and figures on the beach, knowing the tide would claim them within 245 minutes. His ‘presence’ was absolute, his focus undeniable, yet there was no digital trace, no ‘active’ indicator beyond the rapidly disappearing art itself. He worked with his hands, his body, his entire being. There was no ‘checking in’ with a green dot, no performative wiggling of a mouse on a damp, salty laptop. His metric was simple: the beauty created, the awe inspired, before it all melted back into the earth. It was a tangible, undeniable result, even in its fleeting nature.

His approach feels like a stark, beautiful contrast to our current predicament. Where is the space for deep thought, for the incubation period that truly creative solutions demand, when we’re constantly under the implicit pressure to appear ‘on’? The best ideas often emerge when we step away, when our minds wander, when we’re truly offline. The shower, a walk in the park, a moment of quiet contemplation – these are the fertile grounds. But how do you explain a 35-minute gap in your green dot activity with “I was thinking deeply about a strategic pivot”? Most likely, you don’t. You minimize the gap. You hover.

This isn’t about blaming the tools. Slack, Teams, and similar platforms are powerful. They connect us across continents, enable swift collaboration, and can foster remarkable team cohesion. The issue lies in how we’ve allowed these tools to redefine our understanding of work ethic and dedication. We’ve collectively, perhaps subconsciously, agreed to a new, insidious contract: your worth is linked to your digital availability. And the cost? A constant, low-grade anxiety that eats at the edges of our personal time, making true disconnection a luxury, not a given.

It makes me think of those moments, rarely achieved, when you truly get away. When the phone is off, the laptop shut, and the only ‘status update’ is the sun on your face or the sound of the ocean. The feeling of that sudden, delicious freedom from the invisible tether. It’s a reminder of what real presence feels like, not the digital simulacrum we perform daily. The contrast is visceral, almost shocking when you experience it.

Consider how profoundly this affects our well-being. Burnout isn’t just about working long hours; it’s about the psychological burden of never truly being off. Of feeling compelled to respond, or at least appear ready to respond, at any given moment. This perpetual state of readiness taxes our mental reserves, leaving us perpetually depleted. It’s a silent energy drain, far more insidious than a difficult project or a tight deadline. The average person might spend an additional 25 minutes each day just maintaining this digital facade.

My perspective is certainly colored by finding a crisp $20 bill in an old pair of jeans just last week. A real, tangible thing, found unexpectedly, that provided a small, definite pleasure. It had a weight to it, a directness, that a perpetually green digital dot can never replicate. That feeling, that moment of genuine, unlooked-for reward, is what we should strive for in our work and our lives, rather than the performative satisfaction of maintaining a digital signal.

We need to consciously push back, to redefine productivity on our own terms. Managers must foster cultures of trust, where results speak louder than a green icon. Employees must advocate for their boundaries, understanding that true presence, true engagement, requires periods of genuine absence. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do for a project is step away completely, let your subconscious work, and come back with fresh eyes. We owe it to ourselves, and to the quality of our work, to demand more than just the illusion of being ‘on.’

Imagine a world where your output is the only thing that speaks.

This isn’t some far-off fantasy; it’s a choice we can make, individually and collectively. A choice to value deep work over digital theater, genuine rest over performative availability. It’s about recognizing the psychological cost of the constant vigil. If you find yourself craving a true escape from the digital leash, a place where the only dot that matters is the sun on the horizon, then perhaps experiences like those offered by Excursions from Marrakech could be exactly the antidote needed. Because sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is simply disappear for a while, letting the green dot turn grey, and finding ourselves in the process. We need to remember that real life happens beyond the screen, often in landscapes that demand our full, undivided, and beautifully offline attention, for 105 minutes or more.