Forget New Year’s resolutions. They never stick and always end up as worthless as stock options in a crypto trading firm. Instead, it might be an idea to think about some New Year’s motivations, and find things to get enthusiastic about in 2025.

It sounds pat, but as the popularity of terms like “quiet quitting”, “great resignation”, and, somewhat more prosaically, “workplace fatigue” has shown, the world has a problem with lack of enthusiasm, especially when it comes to work. Despite all the talk of employee engagement and the need for “emotional aperture”, a term coined in 2009 to suggest bosses need a higher EQ, Gallup’s latest ‘State of the Global Workforce’ survey suggests that less than a quarter of us feel engaged at work. By comparison, 62% are “not engaged”, while 15% are actively uninterested in whatever it is they do for eight hours a day.