Know someone who needs to read this? Forward it. Did someone send this to you? Subscribe here
It starts after you get through December, in a state of perpetual "final push." Whether you hit your end-of-year targets or fell just short, you left everything on the field.
Then January arrives, and there’s an internal expectation that the three days off for the holidays and a fresh calendar page is enough to completely reset.
Enter February, with its blues. Suddenly, it’s harder to get out of bed, the idea of responding to emails makes you want to turn on Netflix, and you’re not sure why.
When that mid-Q1 slump arrives, we feel the anxiety of reduced performance and start asking ourselves: Am I being lazy? Am I still cut out for this?
Our immediate reaction is to treat the symptoms.
Depending on your personality, you likely react in one of two ways:
You push even harder, white-knuckling your way through tasks to prove you can still do this…and accelerating your eventual breakdown.
You do nothing at all, all while building a silent, corrosive resentment against your organization and yourself.
The "February blues" in the social impact world are only partly to do with winter. They’re also a physiological and emotional debt coming due.
If your job description is defined by mission creep, where the expectations are infinite but the resources are fixed, your motivation will continue to crater. It’s the natural result of spending a year doing as much as possible with less than you need.
If this is you, take a step back and examine the structural support that is supposed to be there:
Are your expectations for what you want to achieve realistic?
Do you have systems in place that work when you aren’t "on"?
Are there rules that protect your time, or is everything an emergency?
If the answer to any of these is no, stop.
Don't try to run faster; start building the track.
Use this month to build the support that make the work sustainable.
What would make you most likely to forward this email?
