Why accountants cannot stop thinking about work, and how to ease it

Why the day keeps running after the laptop closes

For accountants, the hardest part of the job is often not the hours on the timesheet. It is the mental residue that lingers after client work, review notes, and deadlines are technically done. In a Big Four environment, that residue is fed by constant availability, travel, and the pressure to keep multiple engagements moving at once, which leaves too many open loops running in the background.

That is why the problem is bigger than stress management. It is a work-design issue: if the firm keeps piling on unfinished tasks, people carry the work home in their heads whether they are logged in or not.

The brain does not like unfinished work

The Zeigarnik effect explains a lot of this. Incomplete tasks stay mentally active, which means the brain keeps devoting attention to them even when the workday ends. The side effects are familiar to anyone in audit, tax, or advisory: mental fatigue from task-switching, less capacity for deep thinking, decision fatigue later in the day, and trouble relaxing once the laptop is shut.

That matters during busy season, when the work is already fragmented by client follow-ups, review comments, and internal deadlines. If a senior manager is holding five incomplete deliverables in their head, the cost is not just tiredness. It is slower judgment, worse concentration, and a higher chance that tomorrow starts with the same unfinished business still unresolved.

Why this is a workforce problem, not a personal failing

The professional-services sector has been hearing the same message from accountants around the world. ACCA’s 2024 Global Talent Trends survey, which asked almost 10,000 professional accountants in 157 countries about work, hybrid working, diversity, mobility, mental health, and the cost of living crisis, found that 57% said their mental health suffers because of work pressures. It also found that 76% said hybrid working was their preferred arrangement.

Audit talent research tells a similar story. A study from ACCA and CA ANZ drawing on more than 6,500 respondents worldwide found that work-life balance was the single biggest issue undermining audit’s attractiveness and retention. Sixty-one percent said it hurts the profession’s appeal, and 73% said it hurts retention. The same research also surfaced concerns about bullying, sexual harassment, and racism, which is a reminder that workload is only one pressure point inside a much broader culture problem.

That wider talent picture matters for KPMG because the firm is competing for people who can choose where they work, what kind of work they do, and how much of their life they are willing to give up for the next promotion cycle. If the answer is simply “be more resilient,” the firm misses the point. The real question is whether the organization is reducing cognitive fragmentation or just asking people to tolerate it.

How to ease the mental load day to day

The most useful advice is not vague encouragement to disconnect. It is a set of habits that close mental loops before they spread.

• Use the next-action rule. Do not leave tasks as broad obligations like “finish the audit memo” or “follow up with client.” Translate them into the next specific step, such as “email the controller for the three missing schedules” or “draft the opening paragraph on revenue recognition.”

• Time block by task type. Group deep work separately from shallow work so that focus-heavy tasks do not get shredded by constant switching. A block for analysis, a block for email, and a block for admin work creates cleaner attention and less fatigue.

• Batch similar work. Review comments, partner edits, and client queries all demand a different mental posture. Handle them in clusters instead of scattering them across the day, so your brain does not keep resetting.

• Protect a true focus window. In a profession that rewards responsiveness, focus time has to be actively defended. Without it, every hour becomes a partial hour, and partial hours are what make the work follow you home.

For KPMG professionals, those changes are not a productivity gimmick. They are the difference between ending a day with a clear next step and ending it with a dozen unresolved obligations still running in your head.

What KPMG has already done, and what it signals

KPMG has already acknowledged that burnout is not solved by asking people to tough it out. In May 2021, the firm announced burnout-reduction measures that included a Wednesday afternoon no-meetings block from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern, camera-off Fridays, shorter standard meetings by five minutes, and discouraging early-morning meetings.

The firm later said its traditional U.S. audit busy season runs from early January to March, which is exactly the period when workload fragmentation can become most damaging. In its 2024 mental-health update, KPMG said it was aiming to end the old busy-season model as it had long existed, and the numbers it shared suggested some improvement. In 2023, average audit hours fell 11% year over year, from 51 hours a week to 45. The share of professionals working no weekends rose from 18% to 29%, while the share working 50-plus hours across eight weekend periods dropped from 31% to 17%.

KPMG also said 88% of managers found its Energy Check-In prompts helpful, and 77% of participating professionals said those conversations supported their well-being. The firm has expanded mental health benefits, launched a mental health training course, and increased free counseling sessions to 10 per issue per year. More recently, KPMG’s people committee said it was monitoring the Global People Survey action plan and wellbeing progress, and the firm’s 2026 Impact Plan says wellbeing remains a strategic priority.

Those steps matter because they show the firm is not treating mental strain as an individual weakness. It is at least recognizing that schedule design, meeting culture, and manager behavior shape whether people carry the job around with them after hours.

What this means for audit quality and retention

There is a direct line between cognitive overload and firm performance. People who spend the evening replaying unfinished tasks are not recovering properly, and people who do not recover make more errors, learn more slowly, and have less patience for the next client escalation. That is especially consequential in audit, where the work depends on sustained attention, clear judgment, and the ability to absorb complexity without losing the thread.

The broader profession has already named the stakes. ACCA’s research identified five themes that keep coming up with respondents: work-life balance, remuneration, career ladder and work variety, sustainability reporting, and technology. KPMG’s own experience suggests wellbeing cannot sit apart from those other pressures. If the firm wants to protect retention, support the partner track, and keep teams sharp through busy season, it has to keep shrinking the number of unresolved open loops people carry from one day to the next.

That is the real fix: not asking accountants to be tougher, but building a job that lets their brains stand down when the workday ends.