This has been a longstanding theory of mine. The brain is lazy and doesn't like to think - people sometimes miss manual labor because you don't have to spend too much time thinking since at some point it becomes rote.
Every once in a while I pine for jobs I had before I was an engineer because the stakes were low and I never had to give work a single thought while I was off the clock. Ultimately I think I'm happier as an engineer (at least at my current job) but I still miss it sometimes.
I miss my old restaurant jobs- not because the stakes were low, but because the requirements were all well-defined. I knew when I was doing a good job because everything was running smoothly, and then I got to go home and screw around. Being tired didn't make work that much worse because it was easy to get into a flow state.
Compare that to current job- must maintain several projects, all of which are constantly changing scope, while leveraging soft skills and playing office politics, while worrying about career development...
Unless you're carrying a pager, as an engineer you don't really need to think about work when you're off the clock. Culturally this tends to happen a lot, but it's not mandatory.
I don't mean that I _have_ to think about it, it's more that any problems that existed at the end of the day will exist the next day. There's no reset because there's no second shift coming in after me. That causes me to think about the problem, at least subconsciously, until I can fix it.
When I worked in food service, any problem that came up that wasn't solved when my shift ended, would likely still be fixed by the time I worked next.
I have had both Engineering jobs that would force me to be always on and other engineering jobs in which I would completely disconnect as soon as I leave at 5PM.
The ones in which you fully disconnect are so good for your private life. You leave the office and don't even think about opening the work laptop anymore, that's something special.
