This unspoken tradition is stalling our economy. But is it really so bad?

There’s an annual tradition that occurs only in Australia. Every year, some time between the Melbourne Cup and Australia Day, the country slows down. Kids wrap up school for the year, workers turn out-of-office replies on, meetings evaporate from calendars and there’s a collective acknowledgement that everything is just going to run at half speed.

Welcome to the Great Australian Shutdown.

This months-long pause isn’t carved into any legislation, but is an unofficial countrywide tradition that says – after one last big push of the year – that not much important work is going to happen over the warmer months.

But as emails start bouncing back, and the familiar catchcry of “let’s pick this up the new year” echoes around workplaces, there is an important question that needs to be asked: is this a national productivity problem or just the healthy pressure valve we all desperately need?

Making a case against the shutdown is easy. Australia is in a productivity hole, and effectively winding down for several months every year doesn’t do us any favours.

We’re living through the slowest rate of economic growth in decades, with labour productivity falling to just 0.8 per cent. Of course, there are bigger structural reasons than just our Christmas break to blame, but it doesn’t exactly help.

If you clear the decks now, you’ll also clear up your headspace and calendar for the start of 2027.

The shutdown is not spread evenly either, with hospitality, medical and retail workers bearing the brunt of work over the holiday period. For many employees, however, the warming weather signifies the slowing down of work before Christmas, before a leisurely return in the new year.

We have a lot of reasons to be thankful for the Great Australian Shutdown. Unlike workers in the northern hemisphere, who work right up to Christmas, then quickly forget it to slog through another cold month, the timing of summer, school holidays and our Christmas and new year break makes a lot more sense. It’s a moment for many of us – but not all – to down our tools, take a deep breath and reset for the calendar year ahead.

There’s also a real benefit to collective time off. Various researchers over the years have found that the value that we get from our breaks increase when other people are on the same schedule.

This is one of the reasons why the happiness and wellbeing levels of retirees, and people who are unemployed, goes up at weekends compared with during the week, as there’s collective benefit that occurs when everyone else is not working.

This is amplified over the summer months when it feels like the entire country is on holidays at the same time. The news is slower, the days are longer and everyone can switch off together. Your boss is not going to message you, your colleagues are also at the beach, and we can focus our energy on our family, friends and that new book we’ve been hanging to crack open.

The last thing you want to do during your break is think about work, and with a bit of preparation you can achieve that. Aim to make these final few weeks as the shutdown kicks in as productive as possible. Make that important decision, sign off on the new budget, approve the next hire, and kill any projects you’ve been meaning to all year.

If you clear the decks now, you’ll also clear up your headspace and calendar for the start of 2027. That way you can turn your out-of-office on with no guilt, and relish telling colleagues that you will get back to them in the new year.

The Great Australian Shutdown starts somewhere between now and Christmas, depending on your industry and workload. Productivity problem or pressure valve? In reality, it’s a bit of both, but it’s also the best-timed break in the world, and we’d be mad to waste it.

Tim Duggan’s new book, Clear in Tension: How to get better at conflict, is out now from www.clearintension.com.au.

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Tim Duggan is an author, founder and optimist. He co-founded Junkee Media, is the Chair of the Digital Publishers Alliance and writes the monthly newsletter, OUTLET (One Useful Thing Literally Every Time).