January - A Reset Month

Reset Month: Working With January, Not Against It

Hard-charging into the New Year? Excellent. Get after it.

Wandering in, taking it steady? Also excellent.

January tends to sell one story, “full speed, straight away.” Although, there’s another narrative running quietly alongside and it comes from your body, not the calendar. The organisational calendar is designed to restore momentum after the holidays.

Your body’s calendar is sending a different message. It still knows it’s winter. You know the mornings are dark, the air is crisp and the evenings pull us inward. Biologically, this is not a “go hard” season. Biologically, the “new beginnings” should start in Spring. I’m not saying to continue to hibernate, but it is worth paying attention to.

Why January Feels Harder Than It “Should”

After Christmas, many people expect to feel refreshed and ready, but the reality is they feel flat or foggy. Christmas, sometimes, isn’t the most restful! This doesn’t mean there’s a lack of motivation – quite the opposite – it’s a seasonal!

Reset Month: A Smarter Way Through January

Reset Month is about working with winter physiology while still meeting professional expectations. Unfortunately, you can’t hibernate through January - clients, colleagues, and commitments still exist. You can, however, design January to be a month of clarity, and a planned-out ramp-up into the rest of the year.

Maybe you’re feeling refreshed and gunning for the new year, if so, that’s great. This isn’t an excuse to do less, but maybe still take on these points…

1. Stabilise Before You Optimise

Early January isn’t the time for radical change, it is the time to:

- re-establish routines

- normalise sleep and wake times

- restore predictable work rhythms

- reduce unnecessary noise

Organisations that rush straight into optimisation often create fatigue before February even begins.

2. Listen to the Season

In winter, energy often peaks later in the morning and fades earlier in the afternoon, as my previous blogs about winter mentioned.

Practical adjustments:

- schedule demanding work slightly later where possible

- protect mornings from unnecessary meetings

- build in short reset moments between tasks

- reduce “meeting stacking” early in the year

These small shifts reduce cognitive load and improve focus, all without reducing output.

3. Use January to Re-Establish Clarity

December disrupts everything: priorities, boundaries, obligations, focus and more, but January is the time to reset. It’s really worthwhile thinking about…

- what actually matters this quarter

- what can wait

- how decisions are made

- where people should focus their attention

Clarity reduces stress – motivation is great, but sometimes it starts the proverbial snowball rolling too quickly.

4. Build Capacity, Not Pressure

Build capacity first. I’ve talked about capacity-building a lot. If you can do that and enter the new year with clarity, momentum will follow. Resilience in January comes from restoring capacity.

- protect recovery between periods of intensity

- reducing low-value work

- supporting predictable schedules

- encouraging steady, consistent progress

5. Give People Permission to Ease In Without Switching Off

“Ease in” doesn’t mean disengage, this isn’t an excuse for doing less! What I mean is…

- setting realistic expectations

- prioritising quality over speed

- allowing momentum to build gradually

This creates a calmer, more sustainable start to the year and a better set-up for high performance later on.

A Better January Narrative

There’s nothing wrong with feeling eager to get going, I feel it too, but there’s nothing wrong with needing a gentler re-entry either. January works best when we do both. We want to perform well, people around us need us to, but we’re still in winter.

When organisations acknowledge seasonality, people don’t slow down, it allows them to work more intelligently, recover and stay engaged for longer.

Reset Month is about setting the conditions for a year that’s productive, focused, and sustainable.

All the best for the new year!