Every September for years, I made the same mistake. I treated the first day of September as a switch, summer off and autumn on, back to it at full speed as if the previous eight weeks had never happened.
And every year, around the middle of the month, I would crash. Not dramatically, just a quiet flattening. I was tired and behind and oddly low, wondering why I could not keep up with a pace I had set for myself only a fortnight earlier.
It took me a long time to see the pattern for what it was. If you have ADHD or AuDHD, you may recognise it too.
Why September hits the way it does
September arrives all at once. One week there is relative quiet. The next, everything is back: the inbox, the commitments, the diary filling up, the sense that you are already behind before you have even started.
ADHD and AuDHD brains can find transitions costly at the best of times. Moving from one operating mode to another takes real energy, and the sharper the shift, the higher the price you pay for it.
When summer ends abruptly, at least in a work sense, your brain does not get time to re-acclimatise. It goes from low demands to high demands overnight. The result can feel like overwhelm, or flatness, or both at once. This is not a character flaw. It is what happens when a brain that runs on rhythm and structure is asked to find a new one on no notice.
The mid-September crash is a timing problem, not a willpower problem
Here is the part I wish someone had told me sooner. The crash rarely comes from doing too little. It comes from asking yourself to go from nought to everything in a single week, and then judging yourself for struggling.
A restful summer is a good thing, and rest is not what causes the problem. The difficulty is only in the jump, and a jump can be turned into a slope.
Rebuild your anchors before you chase results
An anchor is one of the basics of your day: a small, repeatable point of rhythm. A time you get up, a block when you work, a regular walk. Anchors are what your brain hangs the day on, and they are the first thing that dissolves over a relaxed summer.
Most of us try to rebuild results first. We open the laptop and expect a full productive day, then wonder why nothing flows. That is the wrong way round, because results grow out of rhythm, so the rhythm has to come back first. Understanding how your days are actually built makes this far easier, which is why my free ADHD Daily Routine quiz is a useful place to start at exactly this point in the year.
So rather than treating September as a hard restart, begin the shift earlier. In the last two to three weeks of August, add back one anchor per week. Not a full schedule, just one thing.
- Week one: Set a morning alarm again, even if you have nowhere to be. You are simply reacquainting yourself with a rhythm, nothing more. Resetting your body clock.
- Week two: Reinstate one block of deep work, not a whole day, just a morning or an afternoon. Enough to ease your brain back towards a working state.
- Week three: Get more purposeful about the diary. Increase the calls, tasks and commitments. Something to move towards, so that the first of September is not the day everything begins.
By the time September actually arrives, you will already be part-way through the transition. It will feel like stepping onto a slope rather than off a cliff.
If you are reading this and September has already started, you have not missed your chance. Run the same three steps from where you are, one a week through September, rather than trying to arrive fully up to speed tomorrow. A slower start you can actually keep will carry you further into the autumn.
Make the anchors easy to keep
One small warning. If your one anchor is too ambitious, you will drop it, and dropping it tends to bring a wave of self-criticism that costs more than the anchor was worth.
So keep each one almost laughably small. A ten-minute morning routine, one ninety-minute work block, a single planned commitment. The size of the task is beside the point. What you are doing is proving to yourself, quietly, that the rhythm still exists and you can return to it.
If you tend to lose track of these intentions the moment life gets busy, tie the new anchor to something you already do. Coffee, then fifteen minutes at the desk. School run, then the work block. The existing habit carries the new one along with it.
The melancholy is real, and it is allowed
This feels worth saying too. The end of summer carries its own sadness for a lot of people. The longer evenings disappearing, the particular quality of the light changing, a sense of something closing.
That is a feeling to make room for rather than a problem to fix. You do not have to be fine about it, and pretending otherwise usually just adds a second job on top of the first.
Give yourself the last days of August to feel whatever is there. Then come back at a pace you can actually keep. The structure will still be waiting for you when you do.
If autumn is when things usually unravel
For some people, this is more than a rough fortnight. If every autumn seems to end in the same place, running on empty by October, it can help to have someone alongside you who understands how an ADHD or AuDHD brain works and can help you build a structure and systems that hold. That is a large part of what working together looks like: building a structure that fits the way you are actually wired.
You do not have to earn your way back into autumn by pushing through a crash first. You can ease in on purpose, and arrive in October still standing.
FAQs
Click on a question to see the answer.
Why do I crash in the middle of September?
Because the cost of the change does not show up straight away. You get through the first week or so on the energy of being back, and the bill arrives about a fortnight later, which is why it lands mid-month rather than on day one. It is the size of the jump that does it, not the amount of work.
Should I rebuild routines or results first?
Routines first, every time. Chasing output before the rhythm is back usually means a fortnight of producing very little and concluding that something is wrong with you, when the only thing missing is the shape of the day. Get the shape back and the output follows on its own.
How do I ease back into work after the summer with ADHD?
One change a week rather than all of them at once. A morning alarm in the first week, one proper block of work in the second, real commitments in the diary by the third. Ideally you start this in the last weeks of August, but if September is already here, run the same three steps from where you are, one a week. Easing in late still works.
Is it normal to feel sad at the end of summer?
Yes, and it is very common. There is a real grief in the turn of the season for a lot of people, and it often gets mistaken for the start of a low mood or a sign that something is wrong. Usually it is neither. It tends to pass more easily if you let it sit there rather than talking yourself out of it.
Not sure which anchors to rebuild first?
Take the free ADHD Daily Routine quiz. A few short sections, and you will get your personal results for how your days are built at the moment, plus what would steady them.
Considering 1:1 coaching?
If you are seriously thinking about coaching for yourself, a free Discovery session is a relaxed conversation on Zoom about what is going on for you, and whether working together is the right next step.
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About Linda Fox
Linda is an ICF-ACC credentialled adult ADHD coach (ADHD Life & Business Coach, CALC), with lived experience of ADHD herself. She has been coaching adults with ADHD since 2000, one of the very first specialist ADHD coaches in the UK.
She works with entrepreneurs, legal and medical professionals, and others navigating demanding careers, helping them build practical strategies that fit how their brain actually works rather than fighting against it.
UK-based, supporting clients with ADHD and AuDHD worldwide on Zoom.
