Why Starting the Year in Deficit Fuels Burnout and Stress
By Leyya Sattar
Every January, we’re urged to start strong, reset, and not waste the chance to become the ‘best version’ of ourselves. This might mean joining a gym, trying a new diet, buying a new notebook we’re convinced will fix our life, or setting ambitious goals and becoming more productive. It’s sold as personal growth, but much of it simply pushes us to do more, spend more and keep fuelling the same capitalist machine.
It fails to recognise that we may still be recovering from:
A full year of work and life
Witnessing global atrocities unfold on our phone, then immediately scrolling to something else and pretending our body can keep up with that switch
Emotionally stretched from family dynamics, grief and global events
Financially stressed after December spending
Already behind on sleep, rest and recovery
This language of ‘levelling up’ or becoming the ‘best version’ of ourselves quietly reinforces the belief we’re not good enough as we are. When you factor in everything else people might be carrying, the start of the Gregorian calendar, in the dead of winter, almost guarantees we’re setting ourselves up to fail. We’re not starting from neutral but from a deficit, pressured to chase new goals or resolutions just to maintain the illusion that we’re not falling behind.
What “starting the year in deficit” means
Think of "deficit" as the gap between what life is demanding from you and the resources you actually have. So starting the year in deficit means beginning 2026 already depleted emotionally, physically, financially or mentally, while being expected to perform, change and improve.
For many people, January arrives with:
Emotional deficit: still carrying stress, anxiety, grief or workplace burnout from the previous year. Burnout is not just “feeling tired,” but a recognised response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stress at work, marked by exhaustion, cynicism, and a reduced sense of effectiveness.
Physical and nervous system deficit: months or years of chronic stress accumulate as what stress researchers call "allostatic load", which is the wear and tear on the body and brain caused by repeated stress responses.
Financial deficit: holiday spending, rising living costs, and existing debt. Unsurprisingly, personal debt is closely linked with higher depression, anxiety and stress, as multiple studies have shown.
Time and energy deficit: especially for parents, carers, and those doing emotional labour or holding marginalised identities, who already carry higher baseline stress in many workplaces.
And then we’re expected to overhaul our lives. Be serious.
Why does our brain struggle in this state?
Over the last few years, I’ve been on a research journey into the effects of chronic stress. This began for my own health, but quickly expanded into understanding how stress shows up in the workplace. I bring this thinking into Other Box training and into my podcast, Narcissism At Work, which I co-host with Clinical Psychologist Dr Daksha Hirani. Together, we explore how toxic leadership, narcissistic behaviour and unhealthy workplace cultures impact the nervous system, drive burnout and erode people’s wellbeing.
Chronic stress has a real, measurable effect on the brain. Research shows that prolonged stress reshapes key regions involved in decision-making, emotional regulation and memory, including the hippocampus, amygdala and prefrontal cortex.
In other words:
Your brain shifts into protection mode.
It prioritises short-term survival over a long-term perspective.
Nuance, flexibility and emotional balance become harder to access.
That means:
Minor problems feel bigger than they are.
Everything feels more urgent than it really is.
You are more likely to react quickly rather than respond thoughtfully.
Starting the year already depleted and then piling on resolutions and self-imposed pressure is like trying to invest when your bank account is already in the red. Especially when most people “fail” their resolutions by the second Friday in January, often referred to as Quitter’s Day.
I’m not here to tell you what to do. But if you are setting goals this year, I’d invite you to start with kindness towards yourself.
Instead of thinking, “I just need to be more disciplined,” it may be more honest to ask, “What depleted me in 2025?” And if work is a major factor, to recognise when a workload, culture or pace is simply unsustainable.
In our work with clients in 2025, we supported leaders overwhelmed by rapid growth, a shifting global landscape, financial pressure and layoffs. We worked with HR, People teams and ERGs, navigating impossible expectations, and with employees, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds, who were carrying the cumulative impact of bias, microaggressions and a lack of psychological safety at work. It’s a heavy time to be human, especially for people who care deeply in an increasingly polarised world.
This is why this conversation matters. It’s not just about personal resilience, but about the systems we’re navigating. I was shocked by how many people described 2025 as deeply difficult, even as their online presence suggested the opposite. That disconnect is exhausting, between what we live and what we feel pressured to present. This year, I hope we move toward greater honesty, with ourselves and with one another.
Start the year with recovery
A healthier pattern looks like:
Audit your starting point
Before setting goals, honestly ask: What is my current emotional, physical, financial and time capacity?Stabilise your nervous system first
Prioritise rest, sleep, small pockets of slowness and regulation practices that work for you. This reduces allostatic load and improves decision-making.Align changes with values, not shame
Research around goal setting and mindset suggests that values-based, intrinsically motivated goals are more sustainable than goals driven by guilt or comparison.Work with seasons, not against them
Consider using winter for review, grief, rest and small experiments, and treating spring as a more natural time for bigger shifts.Name the system
Remember that feeling behind is often a product of productivity culture, not a fair assessment of your worth.
How workplaces can support people out of deficit
If organisations are serious about mental health, inclusion and the future of work, they need to stop treating January like a neutral baseline.
Practical shifts include:
easing non-essential deadlines in early January
reviewing workloads for people in chronic over-stretch
resourcing teams properly instead of masking gaps with "resilience" language
recognising that burnout and financial stress are equity issues, not just HR issues
When people are given space to recover first, they are more able to think clearly, engage meaningfully and contribute to culture change.
How Other Box can help
If your organisation wants to stop starting every year in deficit and is ready to build a culture that respects capacity, recovery and equity, we can support you.
Other Box works with global teams to move beyond surface-level wellbeing and into an emotionally aware, values-aligned culture change that does not leave people behind. Contact us here.
