Dear Reader,
A Happy New Year and welcome back to PegSquared Weekly. I thought I'd start this year by tackling that feeling of dread I experienced sitting back at my desk - despite loving my job!
Returning to work after the holidays can feel difficult. Your brain has gone through periods of autonomy, reduced cognitive load, and real recovery, only to re-enter systems designed around constant high demand and rapid context switching. For neurodivergent people, this impacts them more severely because executive function demands, sensory overload, and masking costs compound when transitioning from “holiday mode” to “work mode.”
This shows up as three predictable patterns:
- People struggle to concentrate despite caring deeply about their work.
- Neurodivergent employees experience sharper drops in energy and confidence.
- Organisations misinterpret transition fatigue as disengagement.
This is not about resilience, laziness, or people needing to “push through.”
Through working with neurodivergent professionals across sectors, we’ve seen how “always on” work patterns disproportionately damage the people employers need: those with spiky profiles who deliver exceptional value when systems support them.
When organisations treat January fatigue as a design signal rather than a performance failure, they reduce burnout risk and protect long-term capability.
I’ll be honest: my own ADHD brain came back from the Christmas break acting as if it had never met the concept of “work email” before. Staring at my laptop, genuinely confused about what I actually do all day. This year, however, rather than beating myself up, I paused. What if this was information?
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What organisations might not understand
I was listening to Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast with James Clear - the mastermind behind Atomic Habits - between Christmas and New Year, and something they discussed really struck me. Clear describes the Four Burners Theory: imagine life as a stovetop with four burners - one each for work, family, friends, and yourself. At best, you can only have two on full to work well. Balancing all four simultaneously is extraordinarily difficult.
Over Christmas, I mostly turned off the “work burner”. So turning it back on felt uncomfortable - different from what had become my norm over the previous weeks. But instead of seeing this discomfort as a problem, I’m choosing to see it as information.
Maybe that post-holiday work amnesia is our brain’s way of asking: Do we really want to go back to exactly how things were?
The Four Burners Theory names inevitable trade-offs. You can’t run everything at maximum intensity simultaneously. The problem is that most workplace cultures glorify sacrifice and treat “work burner permanently maxed out” as the baseline for commitment. That’s unsustainable for everyone. For neurodivergent people, it’s actively destructive.
Research on neurodiversity at work consistently identifies executive function demands: attention regulation, working memory, planning, prioritising, and self-regulation, as central challenges in the workplace. These are exactly the skills most jobs quietly assume everyone has in unlimited supply.
Occupational psychology research describes post-holiday blues as a clash between the autonomy and rest of holidays and the constraints of work, creating psychological discomfort. The work hasn’t changed. Your tolerance for its unsustainability has simply been reset by experiencing something different.
Context switching from “holiday mode” to “work mode” is an executive function task. For many neurodivergent people, that jump is steeper and more draining, amplifying the sense of alienation from work. Add sensory overload from returning to busy offices, the cognitive cost of re-engaging workplace masking, and the reality that neurodivergent workers burn out faster under constant high demand, and January “hit the ground running” expectations undermine the foundations of a neuro-inclusive workplace. When you ask "who sees themselves in senior roles?" neurodivergent employees with rejection sensitivity won't raise their hands - not because they lack capability, but because they don't see themselves as successful enough to imagine the next level.
What It Actually Feels Like
When I opened my laptop on January 4th, the disorientation wasn’t about having forgotten tasks. It was about remembering what it felt like not to carry constant, low-level executive function fatigue. To not manage sensory input in open-plan spaces. To not calculate social responses while holding multiple project threads in working memory.
For two weeks, my ADHD brain had been allowed to hyperfocus on things it found genuinely engaging: family time, reading, doing a puzzle, Traitors (!!!) - without the background noise of email anxiety, meeting overload, or the need to appear “professional” in ways that don’t come naturally.
Coming back wasn’t hard because I’d been lazy. It was hard because I’d accidentally conducted an experiment in what my brain feels like when the work burner isn’t permanently maxed out - and the contrast was stark.
Many neurodivergent people experience this even more acutely. The return to work isn’t just about task resumption. It’s about re-entering environments where:
- Sensory input is relentless (noise, lighting, visual clutter, interruptions).
- Executive function is under constant demand (prioritising, context switching, time management, working memory).
- Social performance is expected (meetings, small talk, reading unspoken cues, masking differences).
- Recovery time is treated as optional or lazy rather than essential.
The always-on at work doesn’t just cause stress. For neurodivergent employees, it causes cumulative damage that shows up as burnout, mental health decline, performance inconsistency, and eventually attrition. Interestingly, research on four-day work weeks shows significantly lower burnout rates among neurodivergent staff, precisely because reduced hours create actual recovery time rather than simply shifting exhaustion around.
What Organisations Can Actually Do
This isn’t a personal resilience issue. It’s a systems design issue that organisations can address through three concrete changes.
1. Design January as a ramp-up month, not a sprint start
Most organisations treat January 2nd as business as usual. Meetings resume at full intensity. Deadlines pile up. New priorities get added before old ones are completed.
Instead, try:
- Reduced meeting load for the first two weeks back.
- Protected focus time for task re-orientation and priority setting.
- Explicit permission to revisit deadlines before committing to new ones.
- No new projects launched in the first week.
Why this works: It supports executive function during context switching and reduces cognitive overload during transition periods. This isn’t about lowering standards - it’s about recognising that abrupt transitions are cognitively expensive, especially for neurodivergent brains already managing a higher baseline executive function load.
2. Trial flexible work patterns that protect non-negotiable areas of life
Position flexibility as performance infrastructure:
- Trial four-day weeks or compressed hours in Q1.
- Offer predictable schedules that allow for energy management.
- Create core collaboration hours with protected focus time outside those windows.
- Allow asynchronous contribution where real-time presence isn’t essential.
Why this works: It creates actual recovery time instead of redistributing exhaustion, reduces sensory and social load, and acknowledges that different cognitive styles have different sustainability thresholds.
3. Normalise “life area conversations” in performance check-ins
Most workload conversations happen reactively, after someone is already struggling. By then, the damage is done.
Instead:
- Ask directly in one-to-ones: “Which life areas are non-negotiable for you right now?”
- Design workload around that reality instead of pretending everyone can max out everything simultaneously.
- Frame it as risk management: burned-out people don’t deliver, and replacement costs are significantly higher than adjustment costs.
- Separate adjustment conversations from capability discussions.
Why this works: It reduces unspoken overload, prevents masking-driven exhaustion, and creates an early warning system for unsustainable patterns before they become crises.
One Change, Immediate Action
If you’re managing a team, ask in your next one-to-one: “How are you finding the transition back to work? What would make the next few weeks more sustainable?” Then act on what you hear.
If you’re in HR or leadership, audit your January expectations. Are you treating the first week back as business as usual? If so, what would a ramp-up design look like instead?
If you’re neurodivergent and struggling with the return, know this: your discomfort isn’t weakness. It’s data about what your brain needs to sustain performance. You’re not failing at resilience.
For me, a new year isn’t about doing more. It’s about asking different questions - especially in January, which can be especially challenging for many.
How can I ensure I’m okay? That I try to nourish rather than deplete? How do I deliberately balance the “burners,” not switch to my usual default? (Ask me how this is going in 6 weeks!!)
And finally, TWO questions for you?
Did your brain come back from the holidays acting like it had forgotten how to work? And if so, what is that discomfort telling you about the sustainability of your pre-holiday pattern?
I'd also love to hear from you about what you'd like to see in my newsletters. I am generally inspired by my week or something I am working on, but if you have any thoughts - please drop me an email. I also do love to hear from those that find these useful!!
Tania
P.S Can I mention Neurodiversity Celebration Week already? This years NCW is between 16th-20th March. If you are looking for a speaker please do get in touch. Happy to cover a whole host of topics - anything this newsletter covers for starters. However I do have a great session on Neurodiversity and AI for any organisation that would be interested in understanding how AI can support Neurodivergent employees!
Stephen Bartlett and James Clear episode:
FIVE ways you can work with me:
- Neuro-inclusive Recruitment Audit: Understand what practical steps you can take to ensure your recruitment process is inclusive for all.
- Training: From line managers to leaders, global HR teams to recruitment, awareness sessions to champion training.
- Consultancy: Policy writing, process redesign, reviewing neurodiversity materials, data, ERG launches - anything neurodiversity at work related!
- Coaching: One-to-one coaching to help support an individual navigate the world of work as someone who is neurodivergent
- Speaking: From a fireside chat to a keynote, podcast guest to panellist
Reply to this email to find out more!
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