Getty Images / OurWorldInData / WIRED Blue Monday – the third Monday of January – is, or so the theory goes, the most depressing day of the year. It’s cold, you’ve spent all your money on Christmas and all your new year’s resolutions have failed. Then 2021 came along and added a devastating new wave of Covid-19 infections and deaths. Happy new year. For those of us who spent much of 2020 working on couches and at kitchen tables, it seemed likely the January blues would hit us especially hard. A fine theory – but the data paints a different picture. Behavioural scientists have long claimed that blue January simply doesn’t exist. A 2018 survey of 2,100 working adults in the UK found that January was the worst month for worker productivity. But the reasons provided weren’t stress or mental health related, with participants admitting that they were less productive in January because they found themselves gossiping to colleagues or spending time in the kitchen making endless cups of tea.