As the year draws to a close, we often associate this time with warmth, togetherness, and the long-awaited permission to slow down after months of relentless effort. Yet for many working professionals, December tells a very different story. Rather than a gentle transition into rest, it becomes a period of heightened tension, one final sprint toward the finish line before rest feels deserved.
According to a recent survey cited by Forbes, 53 percent of employees report higher stress levels during the holiday season (Forbes, Bryan Robinson, 2024). This figure reflects more than a temporary emotional response. It points to a deeper and more persistent reality: many people enter their time off without having restored their mental or emotional reserves. As a result, a paradox increasingly defines the modern workplace experience being on leave without truly feeling rested.
This pattern has drawn growing attention from researchers in psychology and human resource management. Rather than viewing holiday stress as a seasonal inconvenience, recent studies suggest it is often the visible outcome of deeper structural and energy related issues within organizations. This article explores the phenomenon of being unable to rest while resting, drawing on established academic and industry research. It also examines how organizations can better understand holiday stress as a strategic signal, and how they can prepare their workforce not only to end the year well, but to begin the next one with greater sustainability.
1. When Time Off Fails to Restore Energy: Employees Are Already Depleted Before the Break Begins
One critical but often overlooked aspect of holiday stress is this: the strain associated with year-end holidays does not originate from the break itself, but from everything that happens before it.
December is not only a festive season. It also marks the closing point of the work cycle. During this period, employees are expected to finalize highly detailed year end reports, resolve unfinished goals and deliverables, and prepare plans and budgets for the coming year. At the same time, they continue to carry personal and family responsibilities that cannot be postponed.
Together, these overlapping demands create cognitive overload, a state in which the brain is forced to process an excessive number of tasks within a compressed timeframe. Under such conditions, the capacity for emotional regulation and psychological recovery becomes significantly impaired.
This phenomenon is supported by the work of Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs (2007) on ego depletion, which demonstrates that sustained self-regulation consumes finite mental energy. When this energy is continuously drained, the body cannot simply “reset” through a short vacation. This explains why many individuals enter their time off with a heavy mind and leave it still feeling exhausted.
Large scale data reinforces this reality. According to the American Psychological Association’s Work in America™ Survey 2023, conducted between April 17 and April 27, 2023 with 2,515 working adults, 77 percent of workers reported experiencing work related stress in the previous month. More than half stated that this stress led to negative outcomes, including reduced motivation, burnout, and difficulty concentrating.
These findings suggest that by the time employees reach the holiday period, many are already operating with depleted energy reserves. They enter their break carrying what feels like a “heavy load,” and when the mind remains in problem-solving mode, genuine physical and mental relaxation becomes difficult to achieve.
From this perspective, failed recovery is not a consequence of vacations being too short. It is the result of entering time off without the psychological and emotional foundation required for true recovery in the first place.
2. Year-End Burnout is a structural issue, not an individual failure
Many organizations unintentionally treat holiday stress as a personal or emotional issue. However, research over the past decade has consistently shown that burnout is a structural problem, directly shaped by how work is designed, paced, and sustained within organizations.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), burnout is classified in the ICD-11 as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Importantly, it is not defined as a personal psychological disorder or a reflection of individual weakness or lack of capability. This definition firmly positions burnout as an occupational and systemic issue shifting responsibility away from individuals and toward organizational conditions.
National data further illustrates the scale of this issue. In its Work-related stress, depression or anxiety 2023/24 report, the UK Health and Safety Executive recorded that 776,000 workers experienced work-related stress, depression, or anxiety during the reporting year. These conditions led to 16.4 million working days lost over the same period.
These are not abstract figures. They are nationally recorded data points that underscore how widespread occupational stress has become. As the primary driver of burnout, work-related stress is no longer an exception within modern organizations; it has become a defining feature of the contemporary workforce.
Taken together, these findings point to a consistent pattern. Burnout does not arise from a single intense season, but from prolonged cycles of work that lack sufficient recovery. The year-end period merely acts as a magnifying glass, making accumulated exhaustion more visible.
Importantly, the impact of year-end burnout does not end in December. In practice, organizations often observe a noticeable decline in motivation and performance during the first quarter of the year. Voluntary turnover tends to rise in the early months, once employees have had time to reflect on their wellbeing and long-term sustainability. At the same time, collaboration and innovation weaken as teams enter the new year with depleted energy reserves.
For this reason, year-end burnout should not be viewed as a seasonal inconvenience. It serves as a leading indicator of how sustainable an organization’s workforce cycle will be in the year ahead.
3. Holiday Stress as a Strategic Signal: Why Organizations Must Observe Energy, Not Just Outcomes
Traditional management systems tend to measure effectiveness through tangible indicators: KPIs, revenue, and performance metrics. However, when holiday stress is viewed as a signal rather than a seasonal inconvenience, it reveals another layer of data that is equally critical: the recovery capacity of the workforce.
Holiday stress reflects how much strain is accumulating within the organizational system, whether recovery mechanisms are sufficient, how well teams are able to maintain rhythm across the yearly work cycle, and ultimately, how sustainable people and talent strategies truly are.
Research on human energy management by Tony Schwartz (published in Harvard Business Review, 2007) emphasizes that sustainable performance does not come from increasing work intensity, but from how effectively organizations manage and renew human energy over time.
This insight carries a clear implication: when an organization enters the new year with a fatigued workforce, it often requires additional weeks—or even months—to regain momentum, regardless of how well-developed its business plans may be. Energy depletion slows execution, decision-making, and collective engagement long before it shows up in performance metrics.
From this perspective, holiday stress should not be interpreted as a negative anomaly to be ignored or “pushed through.” Instead, it functions as a critical early indicator, signaling what needs to be recalibrated before the new year begins.
4. Human Energy: The Missing Foundation of Sustainable Organizational Performance
When reflecting on how a year unfolds inside an organization, it becomes clear that exhaustion rarely comes from isolated moments. It accumulates through repeated cycles: overloaded days, weeks with little opportunity for recovery, and months that move so quickly people barely notice their energy gradually fading. Year end burnout is simply the most visible point in this process, a reminder that no one can continue operating without being properly replenished.
Within this context, Jungji is not positioned as a short term solution. It exists as a space where individuals can return to a more natural internal state, one that is calmer, more aware, and better attuned to regulating energy across different phases of work and life. When individuals reconnect with inner stillness, the impact goes beyond reducing stress. They rebuild a stable inner capacity, difficult to capture through conventional metrics, yet fundamental to the quality of thinking, presence, and contribution within an organization.
From a management perspective, the value of Jungji extends across the core layers of organizational energy.
• At the individual level, Jungji supports the development of self awareness and self recovery. These capacities allow people to maintain clarity and steadiness in environments marked by complexity and constant demand.
• At the team level, Jungji helps reestablish a healthier working rhythm. When attention and presence increase, stress becomes less contagious, connection deepens, and collaboration emerges with less friction and greater trust.
• At the organizational level, Jungji supports a shift away from an operating model that exhausts energy and pauses only when depletion occurs, toward one that sustains energy as part of everyday functioning. This represents a strategic approach to work, particularly relevant in periods that require innovation, transition, or accelerated growth.
What distinguishes this approach is that Jungji does not seek to alter business objectives or performance targets. Instead, it enables organizations to become more intentional in protecting their most critical asset: human energy and mental resilience. Even the most well designed strategy struggles to come alive when teams begin the year already fatigued. When inner capacity is stable, execution becomes steadier and performance more consistent.
Seen through this lens, Jungji is not a wellbeing benefit or an additional mindfulness activity added to an already crowded calendar. It becomes part of a modern management philosophy, one that recognizes human energy as a form of strategic capital. When organizations learn to cultivate this capital with care and consistency, performance no longer needs to be forced. It emerges naturally from people who have the capacity to sustain meaningful work over time.
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