“I can't log off until everyone else does”

The office closes, but your status doesn’tYou’ve finished the thing you meant to finish. The laptop is closed in theory, not in fact, because one more tab is still alive and the chat list is still glowing. Someone is still online. So you stay online too, not because there’s work left, but because logging off first feels like being the first one seen leaving the room.

Green becomes the badge, not the resultThe private rule is simple: if you leave before everyone else, you might look less committed than the person whose dot stays green. That makes the status indicator feel like part of the job. Replies get faster than they need to be. Messages go out to preserve presence. The cost is that attention gets chopped up, and the work you actually finished starts to matter less than looking available while it happened.

Test the exit, not the fearTonight, pick one small finished task and write its name on paper or in a notes app. Then close the laptop, or log out of one workspace only, for five minutes while leaving the rest of your evening untouched. When the urge says you must be the last one standing, compare it to the written task. You are checking whether the work can be real even when your dot is not green.