Does ‘January brain’ actually exist?

Zoning out at your computer screen as you try to tackle the mountain of emails that have piled up since the Christmas break. Frantically searching in the depths of your mind for the right word but never quite finding it. Maybe even putting things in the fridge that definitely don’t belong there.

Welcome to the January doldrums, when precisely no one, not even the type of rise-and-grind hustlers who voluntarily listen to the Diary of a CEO podcast, seems to be on their A game. When we get back to work after that strange, glorious post-Christmas hinterland period, many of us struggle to adjust. Our brains might feel foggy, our motivation lacking, and we’re likely to seriously struggle to match our usual productivity. 

Let’s call that befuddled sensation “January brain”: a general sense of mental sluggishness, as if we’re operating on a slight time delay or in slow motion. These feelings aren’t necessarily confined to and had to rewind their explanation about three times to work out what he was on about. And socialising? It’s barely worth contemplating when stringing a coherent sentence together feels like hard labour.