For many people, work nowadays is primarily mentally rather than physically demanding. Moreover, due to advances in communication technologies, the boundary between work and non-work time has become less clear. Hence during off-job time, people may remain mentally engaged with work by thinking about work-related issues. This has an impact on their recovery process--the replenishing of resources that have been expended in dealing with job demands during work time. Cropley and Zijlstra (2011) conceptualized two fundamentally different experiences of being cognitively engaged with work-related issues, labeled affective rumination and problem-solving pondering. In this study, we examined using a within-person design, how the experience of work-related affective rumination and problem-solving pondering during the evening influence the recovery process. We investigated how the person-level variable self-regulation moderates the day-level effects of problem-solving pondering on the process of recovery during the evening. Data were collected by conducting a general survey and daily surveys over a period of five working days at three daily measurement occasions. Overall 177 individuals (55% female & 45% male) from a range of Iranian organizations provided data. We analyzed data using a hierarchical linear modeling. The results showed that the experience of affective rumination during the evening was negatively related to the state of being recovered at bedtime. In contrast, problem solving pondering was positively related to the state of being recovered at bedtime. Moreover, there was a significant cross-level interaction indicating that self-regulation was positively related to the slopes of problem-solving pondering on the state of being recovered.

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