Unbillable

8 January 2026

You don't have to rush back to perfection

Read time: 3:43 minutes

Happy New Year!

I hope you enjoyed the holidays, {%firstname}.

I took two weeks off, starting with Christmas.

No work.
No social media.
No WhatsApp (OK, almost…).

Just me, my girlfriend, and her sister.

I needed that break. To recharge.

But how exactly did I recharge?

Prioritizing all my healthy habits?
Using science-backed tools?
Optimizing recovery?

Hell no!

I did the opposite. I let go:

• Too many glasses of wine.
• Too much chocolate.
• Sabotaging my sleep doing a 1,000-piece jigsaw until 4 a.m. ("Just one more piece...").
• Watching Loriot movies past midnight.
• Listening to BVB podcasts and childhood audio dramas (TKKG, Die drei ???).
• No breathwork, no yoga.

Responsible? Grown-up? Instagrammable?

Not really.

OK, I also did "cool stuff" I truly enjoyed. Two hikes, a New Year's swim in the sea. Even opened my laptop to work on my business twice. Because I wanted to, not because I had to.

But mostly? I gave myself permission to act like a kid without responsibilities.

Pure indulgence. Zero agenda. Exactly what I needed this year.

Then Monday hit.

5 January. My vacation wasn't even over yet. I'd given myself two full weeks until Wednesday.

But there it was: that old voice.

"You've rested enough. Everyone else is back. Time to get this year going."

I caught myself:

Judging myself for breaking my healthy habits.

Judging myself for not starting on Monday, in full gear. (Although I'd given myself permissionto take two weeks off.)

Wednesday came. My first day back at the desk. And the voice was still there:

“Why are you so slow? You should kick-start your year. Make 2026 count.”

Finally, the penny dropped.

There he was again, my good friend. The recovering perfectionist.

I realized: I needed to give myself permission, again. For both:

Permission to properly rest during vacation — break habits, do nothing, act like a kid.

AND permission for a slow transition back.

Maybe you need the same permission this week.

January creates extra pressure:

Get back to high-performance mode.
Implement your New Year’s resolutions.
And do it fast.

So if you're feeling slow — like you should be at 100% after the break but you're...

Not. Quite. There. Yet.

You're not broken. You're human.

You can’t shift gears like that: from gear 1 directly into gear 6.

A car doesn’t work that way. Your body doesn’t work that way.

And beating yourself up about it only makes it worse.

You need transition time.

Your body doesn't care that a new year has started or that everyone went back to work on Monday.

Trying to re-establish all your healthy habits at once AND pile on New Year's resolutions?

That's how you feel miserable by February.

Try the Calm Transition Approach instead:

Get back on track as fast as you can. Often that means: slowly.

Start slow.
Start small.
Re-stack your habits.
Begin with your backbone.

What actually matters:

Not whether you stay on track.
But how fast you bounce back when life throws you off course.
And how reliably you return to your baseline.

After vacation. After crisis. After life happens.

Honestly:

Who cares about the 6 weeks per year you spend "off track" in vacation mode if your healthy habits give you a reliable system for the remaining 46?

You're not a machine. You're a human being with flaws, struggles, and imperfections. Life gets in the way — and that’s OK.

(Unless you want to "live" like Bryan Johnson.)

What helped me bounce back?

Even before my vacation ended, I invited one habit back in.

Breathwork.

5+ minutes first thing in the morning. Currently: box breathing.

Not because I should. Because it's my anchor. My backbone. The habit that keeps me sane even in the most intense weeks.

When that habit is back, everything else follows more easily.

So get back to yourbackbone and take it from there, {%firstname}.

Old habits, new habits — whatever you need.

January is actually perfect for this.

The year starts slow after the year-end rush. Especially for lawyers.

January gives you space to build what December survival mode never could. In your own time.

Want to make new habits stick (and learn box breathing)?

Read my January 2025 newsletter.

Maybe you need a newanchor — and breathwork could be it.

Why do my clients love it?

• You can do it anywhere, anytime.
• Just 5 minutes daily lowers general stress and anxiety (with benefits comparable to longer sessions).[1]
• It regulates your nervous system in high-pressure moments — before court hearings, between client calls, when chaos hits.

Give it a try if you like and let me know how it went. Whenever you’re ready.

Start slow. Start small. Build from your backbone.

To your calm transition,

Jan

📸 ”Gipfelfoto” on one of my hikes (shortly after we had our “Gipfelbier”) — Alaró, 30 December 2025.

P.S.

I know your holidays may have looked different: family obligations, client emergencies, Berlin blackout… I hope you still found some moments of peace and rest!

Mine were privileged and I'm grateful for that. Just my girlfriend, her sister, and me. We'd visited our families before Christmas. No kids, no hosting duties. Pure rest.

Maybe you hadto jump straight back into full gear on Monday — client crises, court deadlines, no choice. Maybe your holidays were pure chaos. The Calm Transition Approach still applies: start small where you can. One habit. Your backbone. Build from there.

Each year hits different. And that’s OK. My January 2025 newsletter? I felt drained after Christmas vacation and excited to get back to my routines. This year was different. (And I have no idea what 2027 will bring.)

Want to try a guided breathwork session at your own pace? I've recorded a free 38-minute session for my newsletter subscribers.

Know a lawyer who could use a calm transition? Share this.

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