There’s a very good chance that you aren’t reading this. Or, in fact, very much at all. “Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall,” the journalist James Marriott wrote on Substack last year. “Even the most pessimistic 20th-century critics of the screen-age would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis. In America, reading for pleasure has fallen by 40 per cent in the last 20 years. In the UK, more than a third of adults say they have given up reading.”

There is a fundamental flaw in how we approach the calendar year. In January – a month of relentless rain, sub-zero mornings and a post-holiday financial hangover – we embark upon radical self-reinvention. It’s not only unrealistic (the sunlight deficiency!), it’s borderline masochistic.

You don’t have to hit a wall to need a mental reset. Perhaps you’re sleeping but never feel rested. Or losing focus at work and snapping at people you care about. Perhaps the things you usually enjoy leave you cold. When that becomes your normal, it’s worth asking what’s draining you – and what might help you feel like yourself again.

Morning people wake from their sleep with ungrudging ease. They’re at their most productive when the sun has barely got out of the starting blocks. It’s because their brains are most alert and their body clocks perfectly primed for being creative and industrious. And there’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that having a positive wake-up routine comes with a whole load of physical and mental health benefits.

There’s a very good chance that you aren’t reading this. Or, in fact, very much at all. “Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall,” the journalist James Marriott wrote on Substack last year. “Even the most pessimistic 20th-century critics of the screen-age would have struggled to predict the scale of the present crisis. In America, reading for pleasure has fallen by 40 per cent in the last 20 years. In the UK, more than a third of adults say they have given up reading.”

There is a fundamental flaw in how we approach the calendar year. In January – a month of relentless rain, sub-zero mornings and a post-holiday financial hangover – we embark upon radical self-reinvention. It’s not only unrealistic (the sunlight deficiency!), it’s borderline masochistic.