Companies are beginning to perceive these costs. Volkswagen is not alone in its move, which does not affect senior management or employees’ ability to make calls. Thierry Breton, the chief executive of Atos, the French information technology services giant, has said workers are wasting hours of their lives on internal messages at home and work. He plans to ban internal e-mail altogether from 2014. A survey found Atos’s 80,000 employees were receiving an average of 100 internal e-mails a day of which only 15 percent were of any use.

Henkel, the manufacturer of Persil detergent, declared an e-mail “amnesty” between Christmas and New Year, saying mail should only be sent in an emergency.

One interesting recent case of employee burnout came at the very top, with the stress-induced absence for a couple of months of António Horta-Osório, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank. The Portuguese banker, who will return to work Jan. 9, came after he was afflicted with what Sir Win Bischoff, the Lloyds chairman, called an “inability to switch off.”

Inability to switch off (ITSO) is a modern curse.

Horta-Osório has said he made the decision after not sleeping for five days in late October and realizing that there was, according to his doctor, such a thing as “getting close to the end of your battery.” He has now been pronounced fit by the Lloyds board but has said he will change his work habits, presumably in ways that will lower ITSO risks.

I’ve just returned to work after a few days with my 90-year-old father in Scotland. He lives without any access to e-mail or hand-held devices. It was interesting observing the effects of this vacuum on my teenage children, suddenly unable to center their lives around their laptops (and the screen-lowering gesture that seems to accompany the entry of an adult). They started to read voraciously. They were communicative. They got up earlier. To be fair, they also had a Dad with them who was not device distracted.

It’s the start of a new year, a time for resolutions. To each his own, but I know this: Nobody will ever lie on his or her deathbed and say: “I should have kept my device on longer.”

You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen.