Bernard O'Shea: Five reasons why we quietly quit in October 

It’s not laziness — it’s seasonal self-preservation.

"There is a moment every year when something inside us quietly calls time on the rest of the year. It doesn’t make a speech, it doesn’t issue a memo, it doesn’t even leave a note on the fridge — it just quietly packs up its stuff and slips out the side door of the psyche sometime after the last bit of late September brightness has vanished."

I knew October had got its hands on me when I found myself eating the kids’ Halloween sweets and pouring a few casual cans of stout “for no particular reason”.

The gym has become something I fully intend to return to — sometime between St Stephen’s Day and whatever version of January I keep imagining. 

It isn’t laziness — it’s something deeper and older, like the body quietly switching to winter settings.

Not giving up… just powering down.

1. The slow, quiet quit of autumn

There is a moment every year when something inside us quietly calls time on the rest of the year. 

It doesn’t make a speech, it doesn’t issue a memo, it doesn’t even leave a note on the fridge — it just quietly packs up its stuff and slips out the side door of the psyche sometime after the last bit of late September brightness has vanished. 

We’re still here, still showing up, still technically functioning.

I never notice it arriving. I only ever realise it’s happened after the fact, when I catch myself saying things like, “Ah, look, I’ll get into a routine after Christmas.” “I’ll start again in January.” “This is a planning phase.”

A planning phase with no plan. What I really mean is: “I have quietly handed responsibility for my own life to a much fitter, more enthusiastic version of myself who I have scheduled to arrive on January 2.”

2. We’ve been doing this for centuries

We talk about this like it’s a modern failing — like we’re softer than previous generations, or too comfortable, or lacking grit. 

But this seasonal powering down is older than electricity. Our ancestors didn’t just slow down in autumn — they stood down. 

Growth was a spring sport. Winter wasn’t for thriving. Winter was for getting through in one piece.

In older Irish life, there was a very clear rhythm to the year: you rose with spring, you gathered through summer, and once the harvest (okay, I know I’m painting a spiced latte version of the past here) was done, you shifted into maintenance. 

Not expansion — endurance. Even our language remembers this. 

“The evenings are drawing in” didn’t originally mean light shrinking. It meant the self was drawing in. People closed themselves in. 

We think we’re unique for losing steam in October. We’re not. We’re historically consistent. 

We’re just doing it now with electric blankets and delivery apps. The packaging changed; the instinct didn’t.

3. It’s not you, it’s your brain chemistry

What we call “losing motivation” is actually biology flicking a switch behind our backs. 

Humans are seasonal, whether we admit it or not. 

Sunlight governs dopamine, energy, appetite, and basically the part of your soul that believes tomorrow might be better. 

When the daylight drops, your body quietly moves from “expand” to “preserve”. 

You can fight it with slogans, but your nervous system just goes, “Nope”.

Mental energy isn’t free. We treat motivation like it’s a moral quality — as if good people naturally have more of it and the rest of us need to cop on. 

But psychological effort is metabolic. Improvement costs calories. 

Unfortunately for me, I wish it burned more instantly; I’d be 13 stone by St Stephen’s Day. 

Hope costs calories, too. Reinvention costs a lot of calories. 

So the brain responds the way a sensible accountant would: it cuts non-essential spending until the spring budget arrives.

4. The cure isn’t motivation, it’s shrinking the effort

This is where self-help always gets winter wrong.

It tries to drag us back into summer mode with marching-band enthusiasm when what the body actually needs is a gentler approach. 

We think slowing down means we’ve lost; so we go all-or-nothing — “I can’t do everything right now, so I’ll do nothing until January”. 

That’s the point where we quietly abandon ourselves.

Historically, winter wasn’t about doing more. It was about doing less without falling apart.

People didn’t reinvent themselves; they stayed sturdy. They didn’t thrive; they endured elegantly.

We have replaced their fireside practicality with a pep talk culture that asks us to bloom in the dark like a show-off tulip.

The human system shrugs and says, “Not a chance”.

When you shrink the effort, you don’t lose momentum — you protect the ability to begin again when spring arrives.

Spring beginnings aren’t born in January gyms or “new me” declarations — they are born quietly in winter by the people who didn’t disappear from themselves.

5. A small win beats a new year

The great myth of January is that the calendar will do the heavy lifting on our behalf.

That December 31 is a chrysalis and January 1 is a spiritual gym instructor with a clipboard.

But January doesn’t save anyone. If anything, January is emotionally wet cement — it feels promising in theory, and heavy in practice.

The real work of not losing yourself happens now, in the in-between bit. Now is when self-trust is quietly negotiated.

Not through big declarations, but through staying visible to yourself, even at lowered voltage.

We don’t retreat in October because we’re weak — we retreat because the body knows it cannot sprint the entire year without consequence.

The soul shrinks its surface area to conserve warmth. We do not vanish. We draw in close.

And when the daylight does come back, you won’t be starting from scratch. You’ll just be turning the lights up again.