Manageable is the New Productive
Why forcing yourself back into gear is the fastest way to stall
They Won’t Be Serving This at Starbucks
Is it just me, or does January taste like cold coffee, half-dead houseplants, and the weird guilt of not wanting to “crush your goals” yet?
It’s a bit of a paradox…
The holidays are over. The slate is “clean.” You’re supposed to be refreshed, motivated, ready.
And yet even if nothing is technically “wrong”, you feel weighed down. Your brain feels foggy and your ambition? Still in holiday mode.
Cue the self-talk: What is wrong with me?
The short answer is, nothing!
January isn’t exposing an imagined character flaw. It’s exposing your nervous system.
The Real Reason for Your Post-Holiday Crash
People don’t crash after the holidays because they’re lazy. We crash because December is basically a month-long overstimulation experiment.
Lights. Noise. Sugar. Socializing. Travel. Deadlines wrapped in tinsel.
Even if you love the holidays, your nervous system has been running hot: high alert, high output, high cortisol.
Then January hits and the stimulation drops off a cliff.
Now you’ve got shorter days. Less light. Fewer plans. Updated routines. And a sudden expectation that you should focus on “optimizing your life.”
Your nervous system doesn’t interpret this as a fresh start. It interprets it as whiplash.
Physiologically, energy dips after high-stimulation periods because cortisol and adrenaline don’t just politely reset themselves. Add in changed sleep schedules, darker mornings, and reduced daylight (hello, melatonin shifts), and your system is desperately trying to recalibrate while you’re yelling at it to perform.
This is a regulation issue, not a motivational one.
And Then We Make It Worse…
January goes off the rails because we try to force productivity back online. Stacking new habits. Shaming ourselves into action. After all, we were “resting” over the holidays, so now it’s go time.
Many of us treat low energy like a personal failure instead of a biological signal. But forcing output when the nervous system is still in recovery mode is like revving a cold engine. It might move, but you’re doing damage.
When the system feels unsafe or depleted, it resists. And the more you push, the more stubborn it gets.
This shows up as scattered focus. More procrastination. Stronger fatigue. A general sense that everything is harder than it needs to be.
This is why “just add discipline” advice feels particularly cruel in January. It ignores the fact that your body is still unwinding from weeks of sustained demand.
Breathwork Can Help You Have a Better January
Breathwork is extra powerful right now not as a way to get revved up, but as a way to re-establish baseline safety.
The first few weeks of the year aren’t asking for intensity. They’re asking for steadiness.
There’s zero need to be aggressive or to feel like you’re actively trying to override how you feel. The nervous system doesn’t respond well to being yelled at, even when the yelling is internal and well-intentioned.
The idea here is to slow things down just enough for your system to remember how to function normally again. This isn’t about chasing a feeling, but restoring your rhythm.
Here’s a simple place to start:
Inhale through your nose for four seconds.
Exhale through your nose or mouth for six seconds.
No holds. No pauses. Just smooth, effortless breathing, turn over turn.
It doesn’t feel like it, but that longer exhale is doing some heavy lifting. It’s helping to stabilize your stress response and rebalance your carbon dioxide tolerance, which directly affects how calm, clear, or wired you feel.
Try it for two to three minutes at a time. Give it a shot during your next Zoom call, or at that traffic light that only lets 6 cars through at a time.
The point isn’t to think of this as a serious “practice”, but as maintenance.
A New Return to You
January is not the time to become a new person.
It’s the time to get back to yourself.
Back to your natural energy and normal attention span. Back to making decisions without everything feeling so fraught with effort and loaded in terms of meaning and failure.
When you support your nervous system first, motivation doesn’t feel forced. It comes back online as you stop fighting your own biology. Things begin to feel doable again.
Exciting? Maybe not. Optimized? Nah.
But manageable, definitely. And manageable is how momentum actually starts.
Therefore: Stabilize first. Progress will follow.
Ready to Walk the Talk?
To calm your nervous system in real life (i.e. not on a mat, not in silence, not later) download The Silent Reboot.
It’s a free toolkit of quick-and-quiet breath techniques you can use anywhere to help your system settle and get you back to yourself when things feel off, foggy, or louder than they should.
No hype. No motivation talk. Just something practical to use when you need it.
Download your Silent Reboot kit here.
Last Gasp
“Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.”
— Mark Black