Battling Burnout As a Creative
Working as an artist, entrepreneur, and creative is incredible. Manifesting your ideas to reality, expressing emotions, helping to create new and vibrant worlds can ignite your passion and purpose! However, creating is not without its faults, and we are old friends with a particularly rough one-- burnout.
At this point, you’ve undoubtedly seen thousands of articles offering kind but ultimately surface-level advice on battling burnout. Below are tried-and-true ideas and kernels of wisdom we’ve acquired to help you breathe through burnout.
Take Breaks. We know you’ve heard this a million times, dear reader, but hear us out! As creatives, we often correlate our job to our identities. When you’re struggling to find fresh ideas or finish a project- it can feel like a personal attack. With the demand for content increasing, there’s pressure to perform faster, better, and more efficiently than ever before. When you feel the anxiety ball in your stomach start to tighten- step back. Remember that creating isn’t passive work. It takes all of your attention, so naturally, it will be more draining without proper breaks. Set a timer, and each time it goes off, step away from the laptop/notebook. This one’s standard advice for a reason!
Tune Into Your Environment. When burnout rears its head, there’s often an impulse to run to whatever numbs you out. And believe us, we’ve been there. Hours of reality TV, junk food- but before you go running for the covers, take a minute to tune into your environment. Identify five things you can see, hear, and touch to ground you in the current moment. Next, we challenge you to walk around your city/town/backyard without headphones or any distractions. Allow yourself to become an active observer. Discover pockets of magic that will inevitably spark new thoughts and ideas.
Do Something Creative That’s Not In Your Field. Allow yourself to be a beginner in a new arena. Have a pottery class you’ve been dying to try? Colored pencils collecting dust? Go ahead and give your shower a concert! Flexing your creative muscles in a no-pressure environment will help light up your imagination (and serotonin levels) without feeling the need to be productive or perfect.
Look At Your Past Work: Poet Megan Falley once said when editing your materials, create a foster home for beloved ideas/phrases that don’t make it into your current project. There are now potential nuggets of inspiration. When you feel like you can never make anything again, review that list! Take time to also reflect on your older materials and look at how far you’ve come. See if anything jump-starts your curiosity.
Delegate: Asking for help is not easy in a world that glamorizes being overworked and over-caffeinated. But, delegation is crucial for maintaining mental hygiene. Burnout often results from taking on too much too quickly. To combat it, jot down the people on your work team-small or large- and create a working resource map. Note who you go to for specific types of tasks, and consult this group whenever you feel overwhelmed!
Burnout is a beast and can happen even with the best of intentions. We hope that you’ll be able to shift burnout from a long-term house guest to a passing visitor with these tips. Know that we believe in you, and book a session with our team whenever you need a creative boost!
Cheers,
The Content Queens