A 30-year-old professional woman would reach for her phone the moment she woke, spending half an hour scrolling through messages and social media before her feet touched the floor. The habit, she later told clinical psychologist Mehezabin Dordi, left her feeling perpetually rushed, her mind already cluttered before the day had begun. After weeks of deliberately keeping the device out of reach for the first 15 to 30 minutes, the sense of hurry dissolved.

That jarring morning scramble is amplified for many returning to work after a holiday. Prof. Jon Sigurd Wegener, a brain researcher at the Copenhagen Business School, describes the transition as a period when the brain must “get used to the fact that normal everyday life is back.” During time off, routines are broken: no meetings, no urgent emails, often no alarm clock. Upon return, the brain needs to reboot familiar sequences, a process that can take hours or even days, Wegener told the Danish daily Politiken.

Lina Ejlertsson, a doctor of public health at Lund University, notes that the shift can feel particularly tough because holidays involve fewer time pressures and lower performance demands. Yet she and stress researcher Dan Hasson of the Karolinska Institute argue that the post-holiday period need not be a grim countdown to the next break. They advocate for micro-pauses during the workday—a few deep breaths, a short walk, a chat with a colleague—to reset a brain that, Hasson says, can normally sustain focused activity for only about 90 minutes before slipping into a rest state. Ejlertsson also urges workers to preserve small holiday rituals, such as a morning walk with music or a coffee on the balcony, to carry a sense of calm into the autumn.

The first hour after waking emerges as a critical window. Mariana Figueiro, director of the Light and Health Research Center at Mount Sinai, told TIME that morning light is “an alerting stimulus to the brain,” more potent than coffee. Yet indoor lighting, even in bright rooms, rarely exceeds 500 lux, while an overcast day outdoors delivers 5,000 to 10,000 lux—a difference so vast that the circadian clock may not register morning at all. Jamie Zeitzer, a circadian physiologist at Stanford, recommends stepping outside within an hour of waking for at least 15 minutes. Dordi’s advice to delay phone use for 15 to 30 minutes after waking complements this: it prevents an immediate spike in the stress hormone cortisol from a flood of notifications, giving the brain space to adapt naturally.

The simplest prescription, then, is not a productivity hack but a quiet ritual: a morning walk with a coffee in hand, no screen in sight, the body absorbing daylight while the mind eases into the day. As Figueiro puts it, “You get your exercise, you get your light, you’re all set for the day.”