This week I was quoted in Fast Company in a story about workers taking time off for the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto VI. It reads like a novelty story, but it’s about something bigger.

In Severance, the Apple TV series, employees undergo a procedure that splits their work selves from their outside selves. Most of us have never had the surgery, but many of us live by the same rule: one world for work, one for everything else.

The industry survey in the article shows how strong that rule is. Gamers who work full-time were asked how their boss would react if they took time off to play. Only a third expected their boss to be supportive. About one in four expected their boss to be unsupportive or very annoyed. More than a fifth said their boss would never know.

That last group is the one I find telling. The time off is theirs, and what people do with their personal time is none of their boss’s business. Yet many still feel they have to hide it. That raises a broader question: why do we feel we must sever our personal and professional lives at all? Being professional shouldn’t mean appearing to have no personal life.

Years ago, I published a study in which people recognized exactly this norm, an unwritten rule that work is no place for the personal. But in that same data, people said they wanted something different. Not to bring their whole selves to work, but to feel comfortable sharing small glimpses of what they care about, without feeling embarrassed for it.

More recent research from Ashley Hardin at WashU’s Olin Business School and her colleagues shows why those glimpses matter. When we see small, unplanned moments from colleagues’ lives outside work (a child interrupting a call, a dog wandering into frame), we see them as more authentic, more trustworthy, and more human, and we’re more willing to build working relationships with them. The glimpses don’t have to be big. They just have to be real.

There’s a business case here. Severing our personal and professional lives isn’t just bad for people. It’s bad for the work. As I put it in the article, we shouldn’t have to turn off our Human Mode to be considered professional.