Feeling nostalgic for summer? How to beat the back-to-work blues

The September Reset: Why the First Week Back Feels Heavier Than Usual

Ninoda.com – There is a particular quality to the first Monday alarm in September. The light creeps in later than it did three weeks ago, the inbox has swollen with unanswered threads, and the mental architecture that held together over a fortnight of lazy mornings and late dinners suddenly feels like a foreign language. Even employees who genuinely enjoy their roles report a measurable dip in morale during that initial re-entry window, and the shortening daylight hours of early autumn compound the effect. The phenomenon is well documented in workplace-wellbeing literature, and a growing number of coaches, counsellors, and psychologists now offer structured guidance for navigating the transition without burning out in week one.

Start Small, Build Momentum

The instinct after a long absence is to attack the most demanding project immediately, as though proving your competence requires a single heroic act. Careers coach Sarah Robinson pushes back against that impulse. Her advice is to treat the first day as a warm-up rather than a sprint.

“It’s about trying to build momentum, because I think sometimes it can just feel overwhelming when you’ve got a massive inbox.”

She recommends selecting small, manageable tasks and collecting what she calls “quick wins” to generate forward motion. Counsellor Susan Carr echoes the sentiment, noting that while not every sector permits a gentle ramp-up, those that do should encourage employees to lower their first-day expectations. In practice, that might look like a full day devoted to clearing correspondence rather than stacking back-to-back meetings.

The Strategic Out-of-Office

Tara Humphrey, a primary-care leadership consultant, takes the concept a step further. On her first day back she keeps her out-of-office reply active, buying herself a pocket of headspace while the organisation reorients around her presence. She also crafts the message itself with care, explicitly inviting colleagues to follow up once she is fully settled. The psychological payoff, she explains, is the elimination of that nagging uncertainty about whether something critical slipped through while she was away.

A more radical variant exists. Humphrey recalls a former colleague who, upon returning from leave, simply deleted every email accumulated during his absence.

“He said, ‘if people want me, they’ll come back to me’.”

Whether that approach suits your workplace culture is another question, but the underlying principle—reclaiming agency over your inbox rather than being reclaimed by it—resonates with many professionals.

Carrying a Fragment of the Holiday Home

Carr urges returning workers to identify what actually restored them during the break and ask whether a scaled-down version can slot into ordinary routines. A daily siesta may be impractical in a UK office, but cooking a Spanish dish on a Tuesday evening captures some of the same sensory texture. She also encourages the “tourist in your own town” mindset: the curiosity that makes you photograph unfamiliar architecture abroad is available locally, and most people, she admits, fail to notice what sits on their own doorstep.

Psychotherapist Dr Joy Conlon, who runs the wellbeing-coaching service Alive 365, frames the same idea in slightly different terms.

“Bring one restorative part of the holiday home with you. This might be an evening walk, eating without looking at a screen, reading before bed instead of being on a screen or just spending more time outdoors.”

The common thread is specificity. Vague resolutions to “relax more” tend to dissolve within forty-eight hours; a concrete, sensory-anchored ritual is far harder to abandon.

Blues Versus a Deeper Problem

Not every post-holiday low is merely nostalgia for long lie-ins. Carr, who practised as a solicitor before moving into counselling, describes her own experience of returning from a break only to find herself in “floods of tears every day.” For her, the holiday had not caused the distress; it had removed the distraction that masked an existing one.

“I was vaguely aware before I went on holiday that things weren’t right and I was quite stressed… It wasn’t just a case of needing time to adjust, it was a sign I needed a rethink.”

So how does a worker distinguish a two-week adjustment dip from a genuine signal that the role itself has become unsustainable? Carr’s answer is blunt.

“It probably sounds really obvious… but I suppose one of the signs of that is how long it goes on for. It’s that length of time but also maybe the intensity of the feelings.”

She cautions against what she terms a “knee-jerk reaction”—the sunbed fantasy of quitting everything to retrain as a scuba instructor or yoga teacher. Change, when it is warranted, benefits from deliberate reflection rather than a single dramatic decision made under the influence of exhaustion and contrast.

The Shape of the Break Matters

Dr Mark Williamson, chief executive of the charity Action for Happiness, points out that the pleasure of a holiday is not confined to the days spent away. Anticipation—the planning, the countdown, the mental rehearsal—contributes substantially to the overall wellbeing lift. Equally, the type of activity undertaken during the break shapes how one feels on return. He cites research he describes as “genuinely surprising” suggesting that physically active holidays, involving walking, cycling, swimming, or exploration, tend to produce a more durable refresh than passive poolside idleness.

Duration also plays a role. Longer breaks deliver a larger initial boost but appear to fade more quickly, partly because the employee returns to a larger accumulated backlog. Williamson notes emerging evidence that shorter, more regular breaks—say, five-day intervals spaced through the year—may deliver greater cumulative wellbeing than a single extended absence. The practical implication for September specifically is that workers who took a modest fortnight in August, rather than a month-long departure in July, may find the re-entry gradient noticeably gentler.

None of this advice replaces the structural conversations many organisations still avoid: workload design, realistic deadlines, and the quiet permission to say no. But for the individual navigating that first, disorienting week back, the strategies above offer a practical scaffold—small tasks, a curated inbox, one carried-over ritual, and an honest check on whether the discomfort is transitional or terminal.