Dreading going back to work? How to ease the post-Christmas return

For many, this weekend marks the final pause of the Christmas holidays; a moment when most people are still officially off work, mentally getting closer to the next step.

Returning to routine after weeks of late nights, family time, and slow pace can bring a mix of reluctance, anxiety, and low energy, even if you don’t enjoy your job.

Psychologists and workplace experts say emotions are common, and the challenge is less about finding the motivation to return to work and more about adjusting your mindset.

This mindset starts with how you frame the weekend, especially Sunday.

Executive coach Beth Hope says “Sunday blues” are very common and are often caused by anticipatory stress, in which the brain anticipates a high demand on Monday and “activates the stress response early.”

One of the most effective strategies for dealing with Sunday fears is to “create a gentle bridge between weekend and work mode,” Hope says, so the return doesn’t feel so sudden.

Some of the simplest ways to do this are:

• Scheduling Monday’s top priority on Friday afternoon gives the week a “clear starting point rather than a challenging start”

• Keeping Sunday evenings calmer and lighter on screens to reduce arousal and allow the brain to calm down

• Avoiding ‘soft starts’ at work, such as checking emails or mentally planning tasks late on a Sunday

Hope also suggests being more intentional about how to spend the last day of the weekend.

If you find it difficult to switch off, plan something interesting like exercising, seeing friends, or doing something creative that fully engages your attention.

Hope adds that creating small, familiar rituals, like going for a short walk, taking a hot shower, or laying out work clothes for the next day, can also make a difference, especially if you’re feeling mentally distracted.

Hope says “thought downloading” can be helpful, especially if anxiety still lingers before bed.

“To help externalize mental clutter, take a few minutes to write down the tasks, worries, or decisions going around in your mind.

“Once written down, the brain no longer feels the need to rehearse it, which can reduce anxiety and improve sleep.”

For those who find Sunday’s anxiety goes well beyond Monday morning, wellness coach Denise Byrne says the problem is often not motivation but overload.

“After a long break, it is common for motivation and concentration to be lower than expected,” says Byrne.

“Rather than seeing this as a failure, January should be looked at as a period of transition and reset where you intentionally design how you want to work going forward.”

He recommends a reset based on three key practices:

“In the first few days back, pay attention to how your time is actually being spent,” Byrne says. Many people react to emails, meetings, and requests, then wonder where the time went.

Tracking things like meetings, screen time, and focused work “highlights where time is leaking and what is truly productive.”

With this information, you can “reduce unnecessary meetings or create more protected focus time rather than falling back into habits that don’t serve you.”

Byrne says January is an ideal time to notice which tasks, conversations, or ways of working are making you feel burned out.

“Pay attention to when your energy drops and what causes it,” because once these patterns become clearer, they can be managed more consciously.

“This means you can group tiring tasks together, shorten meetings, or schedule challenging work when energy is naturally higher.”

After the break, structure may feel restrictive, but Byrne says the opposite is true because “structure creates freedom.”

Setting time limits on your calendar, grouping similar tasks, and prioritizing certain pieces of work can reduce mental overload and decision fatigue.

“When everything feels urgent in January, having a clear system helps you focus on what really matters and prevents overwhelm from building up earlier in the year.”

This experience resonates with Lesley Cooper, CEO of a consultancy, who says that “reluctance to take time off and get back into routine is inevitable.”

While she doesn’t feel great about returning to work, “I feel like I’m taking a structured responsibility to get back into swing by focusing on intentional rituals like a regular sleep schedule, good nutrition, and hydration.”

Once he returns to work, he sets himself some clear, meaningful but achievable tasks, deliberately quite small, so that he can “feel a sense of accomplishment rather than defeat from the start.”

Cooper adds that he also tries to “be intentional about scheduling time in the early days to catch up, person to person, before getting back into mission mode.”

As a leader, he encourages his team to do the same.

“I try to keep expectations low in the first few days to avoid that feeling of ‘here we go again…there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it’.”