Leadership

The post-holiday funk is coming. How to reset your work in 2026

It’s a predictable response to unclear priorities, depleted energy, and restarting internal systems without recalibrating them first

ByMatthew Fray

Published 15 hours ago

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A version of this article originally appeared in Quartz’s Leadership newsletter. Sign up here to get the latest leadership news and insights straight to your inbox.

That low-energy, post-holiday funk we often see in early January probably isn’t laziness.

Everyone’s still in vacation mode, leaders might think.

Experts say it’s a predictable psychological and organizational response to unclear priorities, depleted energy, and restarting internal systems without recalibrating them first.

Leaders who respond to it as if it’s a morale problem tend to slow momentum even more. Leaders who treat it as a systems design problem can reenergize their teams quickly.

Why does this happen in the first place?

There are four primary reasons, according to a recent Forbes article:

The year’s mental fatigue accumulates in December.Rewards don’t feel as rewarding in December, because many of the goals set by work teams are long-term and unresolved, and motivation is largely shaped by how strongly the brain anticipates reward.People disengage from goals in December. It’s a natural and healthy stress-management function. “This is because adaptive goal disengagement helps reduce stress, depressive symptoms, and emotional........

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