You’re back in the flow of work.
The pace has returned. The demands are real again.
On the surface, everything looks normal.
And yet… something feels slightly out of sync.
January has a particular way of amplifying this feeling. There’s an unspoken assumption that after a break, capable people should return refreshed, focused, and immediately effective. For many high achievers, that expectation becomes a quiet pressure: I should be back at full speed by now.
The problem is that this expectation is built on a myth.
Research on vacations and recovery consistently shows that time away can improve wellbeing, but those gains often fade quickly once normal work resumes. A widely cited meta-analysis found a positive vacation effect on health and wellbeing, followed by a noticeable “fade-out” after returning to work. A more recent meta-analysis reaches a similar conclusion: Vacations help, but the “afterglow” declines once work restarts, with outcomes often returning toward pre-vacation levels over the following weeks.
So what you’re feeling is not a personal weakness. It’s a predictable re-entry dynamic.
This is what I call the Momentum Myth; the belief that momentum returns automatically once work resumes. In reality, many high performers experience a brief but disorientating phase I see repeatedly in coaching: The High-Achiever Dip.
It’s not burnout.
It’s not laziness.
And it’s not incompetence.
It’s transition friction.
Why January feels harder than it “should”
January is a perfect storm; the external system restarts immediately, while your internal system recalibrates gradually. Expectations return. Decision-load ramps up. The pace becomes real again, and quickly.
In organisational psychology, recovery isn’t just “rest.” It’s the process of restoring depleted resources and re-establishing capacity for sustained performance. Annual reviews of the recovery literature make the point clearly: Recovery matters for ongoing wellbeing, motivation, and performance, and it’s shaped by what happens both during time off and after returning.
In other words… coming back isn’t a switch. It’s a re-entry.
And it often feels sharper for doctors, lawyers, founders and senior leaders because they don’t simply return to tasks; they return to responsibility. They return to decision-making. They return to being the person who is expected to be reliable and steady for others.
So when focus feels slightly slower, or judgement feels heavier than expected, it can feel like regression. It isn’t.
It’s your system re-adapting to complexity.
Why capable people feel this dip more acutely
High performers are often most comfortable when they’re in motion. They know how to create pace, how to respond under pressure, how to hold multiple threads at once. The difficulty is that January often forces them into immediate multi-threading before they’ve properly re-orientated.
That’s where the experience becomes cognitively expensive.
One well-known piece of research by Sophie Leroy describes “attention residue”: When you switch tasks, part of your attention remains stuck on the previous task, which reduces performance and clarity on the next one. If January brings a surge of simultaneous priorities, such as meetings, cases, patients, decisions, planning, then the mental switching cost becomes noticeable.
So what you interpret as “I’m not back yet” is often simply: “My attention is being divided before it’s had a chance to settle.”
The three mistakes high achievers make during the dip
When this friction appears, capable people tend to respond in ways that make sense, but extend the problem.
1) Over-accelerating
They tighten routines, add structure, stack goals, and try to sprint back into form. The intention is good, but acceleration without orientation creates motion without direction. This is exactly the trap I explored in The Mirage of Momentum, the idea that activity and progress are the same thing, when they often aren’t.
2) Self-judging
When pace doesn’t instantly return, the internal narrative turns critical: Why am I not sharper? I should be better than this. High achievers often personalise a normal re-entry curve and quietly erode self-trust in the process. That pattern overlaps strongly with what I wrote in The Hidden Cost of Being Too Capable.
3) Demanding certainty too early
This is the most subtle one. In January, many high performers try to plan their way out of discomfort. They push for big decisions, lock in major priorities, and over-structure the year early because uncertainty feels like danger.
But clarity forced too early isn’t clarity… it’s often anxiety wearing a planning disguise.
The result is a quarter that looks organised on paper but feels misaligned by March. This is often how leaders drift into what I call the PaceTrap: speed becomes the strategy, rather than a tool used intentionally.
What actually restores momentum
Momentum returns, but rarely through force.
The leaders who navigate this phase well tend to do three things:
- Orientation before acceleration: they regain bearings before they increase speed
- Re-entry, not restart: they treat January as a runway, not a launch button
- A clarity process, not a clarity demand: they allow priorities to re-emerge through evidence, reflection, and honest review
This is often where an external lens becomes valuable, but not because someone is failing, but because they are between phases. In high-stakes roles, the right perspective at the right time prevents a normal dip from turning into a quarter-long grind.
I often say: “When you’re in the waves, you can’t see the coastline“. A coach becomes the lighthouse, not to motivate you, but to help you see what’s actually happening, separate signal from noise, and rebuild momentum cleanly rather than frantically.
A final reflection
If January feels harder than you expected, pause before you push.
The Momentum Myth tells us we should be back at full speed by now. Research suggests recovery benefits are real, but they don’t automatically “stick” once work restarts.
So the better question isn’t “What’s wrong with me?”
It’s: “What phase am I actually in?”
Momentum doesn’t disappear after a break.
It returns more intelligently when you allow orientation to come first.
References (for end of blog)
- de Bloom, J. et al. (2009). Do we recover from vacation? A meta-analysis of vacation effects on health and well-being.
- Grant, R. et al. (2024). We Continue to Recover Through Vacation! Meta-analysis of vacation effects and fade-out.
- Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks.
- Sonnentag, S. & Fritz, C. (2007/2008). Recovery, well-being, and performance-related outcomes (vacation experiences and re-entry patterns).
- Harvard Business Review (2023/2024). Guidance on post-vacation re-entry routines and the “back to work” transition.
- The Economist (2024). Annual rhythms and post-holiday timing effects (including creativity after holiday, with timing implications).
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