12/26/2025
The "finish strong" narrative is everywhere this time of year, on LinkedIn, in workplace conversations, in motivational content.
But here's what that messaging conveniently ignores: you've been running for eleven straight months.
Your nervous system doesn't care about calendar years or arbitrary deadlines. It cares that you're depleted, and no amount of motivational rhetoric changes that physiological reality.
December exhaustion is cumulative fatigue from sustained effort without adequate recovery.
Think about it: most people have been managing work demands, relationship stress, financial pressures, health concerns, and daily life maintenance since January.
That's nearly a full year of energy expenditure, often without meaningful breaks. Your body has been keeping a running tab, and by December, the bill comes due.
The cultural obsession with "finishing strong" serves productivity culture, not human well-being. It treats people like machines that should maintain consistent output regardless of how long they've been operating.
But humans don't work that way. We have natural cycles of energy and depletion. Expecting yourself to have the same capacity in December that you had in March isn't realistic; it's a setup for failure and self-criticism.
People feel ashamed that they can't muster enthusiasm for year-end pushes, convinced that something is wrong with them. But when we actually look at what they've been managing all year, the exhaustion makes complete sense. They're not lazy or unmotivated. They're human beings who've reached the limits of what their system can sustain.
What makes this worse is that many industries genuinely do have year-end deadlines and intense Q4 demands. So people are caught between their body's legitimate need for rest and real external pressures they can't simply ignore. This creates a brutal bind where neither pushing through nor slowing down feels like a viable option.
But let's be clear about something: the expectation that you should maintain peak performance for twelve consecutive months is fundamentally unreasonable. Elite athletes build recovery into their training because they understand performance depends on rest. Somehow, we've decided that knowledge doesn't apply to regular life and work.
Give yourself permission to do the bare minimum in areas that aren't genuinely urgent. Not everything labeled "urgent" actually is. Many year-end deadlines are arbitrary, and many expectations can be renegotiated or simply not met without catastrophe.
Try This:
Identify what absolutely must happen before year-end versus what you're doing because of internalized pressure
Communicate clearly about your capacity to bosses, family, and yourself, without apologizing for being human
Watch for burnout signs: cynicism, detachment, inability to feel satisfaction even when completing tasks, physical symptoms
Then say to yourself: "My exhaustion in December is a normal response to eleven months of sustained effort. Slowing down isn't giving up."
The calendar turning to January won't magically restore your energy if you completely drain yourself first. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is acknowledge your limits and protect what's left of your reserves.
