How to survive creative burnout
A simple handbook for when your motivation is gone
The longer you do creative work, the greater the odds you’ll have days where you don’t feel like doing it anymore. It comes with the territory of working with ideas all day. The problem is few of us are taught to expect it or how to manage it. Burnout is often a sign that we do not have good separation between the work we do and our sense of ourselves. This means that when we tire of the work we’re doing, we feel the loss of something far more profound.
How to know when you’re burned out
Burnout means you’ve pushed your creative energy beyond the point of recovery. Like a well of water, creative energy replenishes itself slowly over time. A person who has pushed their creative well too hard for too long will, like its watery counterpart, one day find it empty. If the only warning sign is an empty tank, it’s too late for easy fixes. Common signs you might be burnt out include:
You dread waking up (unless this is not unusual for you)
You saw the title of this essay and felt a ray of hope
Inspired, motivated people annoy you
Everything seems pointless
You’re drinking or eating more, or showing whatever your signs of depression are
It’s a struggle to find motivation to work on anything
But before you chalk this up to creative burnout, there are other problems that can create these behaviors. Most likely there are several issues effecting you at the same time. This may include issues at home, or with family and friends. How is the morale in your workplace? Are people generally happy or cold? There may be issues beyond your own creative habits that are having a negative emotional impact on you. Sorting it out can take time, and it’s rarely helpful to blame everything on one specific part of your life.
Surviving burnout
Using the well example again, what would you do if you ran out of water? Would you become one with your couch, pizza in hand, watching movies all day long, leaving it to the fates to decide if you’ll ever drink water again? I think not. You’d go out to the store, or perhaps to a neighbor’s house and ask to borrow some of theirs.
Burnout is entirely survivable. All creative people experience it as part of the course of their career. Many of them develop the habits that allow them to come back, sometimes stronger or more motivated that they were before. The well will fill again all on its own, unless you rush for quick-fixes and drastic actions.
The best place to start with survival tactics is with your friends and support system. Pick your favorite person, or co-worker, and tell them how you feel. “Hey friend, I’m so burned out right now.” 9 times out of 10 you’ll get more support and encouragement than you expected.
They may have similiar feelings and you won’t feel alone. Or they can share a story of their own creative struggles. Even if the conversation lasts 25 seconds, you’ll feel more human and like yourself. If you have specific things they can do to cheer you up, name them. Be specific.
This might include:
Do you want them to try and make you laugh?
Do you want encouragement?
Distract you with something fun?
Do you want them to listen to you vent and complain now and then?
Dance outside your office when they walk by?
Remind you the good reasons why you chose this kind of work?
If your manager understands anything about creative work, it’s in their interest to help you deal with burnout. If you are going to be less reliable for awhile, the sooner they know the better and can perhaps even agree to take something off of your plate. Even with the most calculating and evil manager, if you report to them you are one of their assets. When you’re toasty, you’re at risk of crashing completely or negatively impacting others and they have good reasons to help prevent that from happening.
A more likely situation is they already know there’s something wrong. They can sense the difference in your behavior in meetings, and see the quality or of the work you’re producing decline. A good manager would ask and investigate to find out what’s wrong, but some don’t know what to say. In that case, it’s up to you.
Here’s an easy way to go (if you don’t trust your manager enough to share this, read about how to survive a bad boss):
“Hey boss. I’m concerned about something. I haven’t been as motivated as I’d like on this project for the last 2 weeks. And I’m having a hard time keeping up. I’m trying to figure out why, and it’s possible I’m burnt out on some aspect of this work. If you have suggestions I’m open to them, but I wanted to make sure you were aware of what’s going on to reduce the impact on you. I’ll keep you posted as I figure out what we can do about it.”
By starting a conversation you take responsibility for you burnout. You score points with you manager for be aware of what’s going on, and taking a mature and open course of action.
Survival tactics
Talking with others may help but it’s likely something deeper is going on for you. Figuring it our can be tricky and everyone is different in how they figure it out. Here are some tactics that have worked for me and other professional creatives I know. But i recommend experimentation on your own:
Discipline. Most professional creative people rely on commitment, more than inspiration. They don’t wait to be in the right mood, they show up anyway. And when they do, a better mood sometimes arises from doing the work, rather than the other way around.
Plan an escape. Take a day off and do the most dramatically easy but fun thing you can think of. Go see a matinee downtown, have a fantastic lunch, shop, browse, and walk. Be as indulgent as you can stand, and drag as many of your friends along with you. Use a vacation or a sick day if you have them (Isn’t burnout a form of poor mental health?)
Laugh. Whatever it is you find funny, bring more of it into your life. Whether it’s certain people, films, TV shows, plays, books. Choose to laugh.
Scream. I’m a believer in primal screams. I feel better after I’ve yelled at the top of my lungs. Our bodies have energy they need to release and this is one way to get it out. Practice different screams, such as yelling ordinary words (“Papaya!!!”) vs. generic scream sounds (“Aaaaaaaagggh!”). Get friends and co-workers to participate if you can. Even if alone, and you have to do it into a pillow or underwater to not upset the neighbors, do it anyway. You’ll feel better, I promise.
Fun time. How much time per day do you do stuff purely for fun? Just because you like it and for no other reason? Why isn’t this number larger? What is more important than fun and happiness over the course of a lifetime?
Sleep & Exercise. Our brains are just one small part of our bodies and if we treat our bodies poorly, our brains suffer too. I’ve found that if I’m not getting enough exercise, I’m about half as useful to the world than otherwise. Start taking a walk every day. Go swimming. Have more/better sex. Free up your body, and your mind will follow.
Travel. Get in the car, pick a direction, and drive. Grab friends, or not. Bring food, or not. Play music really loud, or just roll down the windows, and stick your head out (pssst.. this is a good time to scream). Use some vacation time, or ask for time without pay so you can stretch out your time (and your time may be more valuable than your money).
How to begin again
After you’ve made some effort to escape, and the well has recovered, it’s time to get back to work. Here’s some advice for how to start again, and reconnect with your work:
Break projects into small pieces. What are the smallest meaningful pieces to work with? Work on a page. Can’t do a page? Work on a paragraph. Get down the smallest bit you feel you can manage, but do it. Like Guthrie said, take it easy, but take it. After you do one piece, find the strength to do the next one. If you can’t, go for a walk, call a friend, but then come back and try again. And on and on. One small piece at a time. If you’re lucky, once you’ve got a few pieces done, you’ll hit your stride and it won’t seem so bad. If not, just slug it out. At least you’ll be able to say tomorrow you did something today.
Look at the worst pieces of work you know of. The worst writing. The worst painting. The worst web design. Worst whatever. Do you feel anything when you look at the crap? Does it annoy you? Make you angry? Is there still a response there at all? Some energy somewhere in your gut? Can you redirect it?
Repeat above, only with the best piece of work you know. Go to a museum, or your favorite building. Watch your favorite film, read your favorite book. Do you get any energy there? Anything you can bring with you into your own project?
Avoiding burnout
After you’ve gone through it once, you might fall victim to the arrogance of invulnerability and believe you won’t ever get burnt out again. Don’t be stupid. It’s denial you’re feeling, not confidence. As long as you take on tough assignments and push yourself creatively you run the risk of going to far. Here are ways to avoid burnout longer term.
Change your work environment: Is it time to find a new job? A new boss? Do you need to redesign your workday? Your workflow? Can you upgrade your environment, with better music, lighting, or inspirations?
Project assignments: How do you decide what project assignments to take? How can you find more variety in your work, so that there’s a chance you’ll develop new interests, or new skills? Growth is the best burnout prevention technique. It’s easier to stay motivated if the work and the people stay interesting.
Work on more than one project at a time. My wife, an artist, never works on one painting at a time. When she feels stuck on one, she’ll move over to another and it always seems fresh and interesting, compared to the work she just left. I find the same thing with writing. Find ways to give yourself alternatives, so that you can still be productive, while having the choice to temporarily skip a problem you are annoyed by or frustrated with.
Managers and work relationships. Do you like the people you work with? I don’t know how long I could be creative if I disliked most of my coworkers. The real problem might not be creative at all. It might be the unhealthy nature of your work relationships. Time spent improving relationship skills creates the potential for change, while banging your head against the wall every day and complaining to friends probably doesn’t.
Career & Lifestyle: How long have you been doing what you’re doing? Do you expect to do it forever? Perhaps you need bigger changes in your life that you’re getting. A new friend, a new lover, a new city, a new company, a new hobby, might be the only way to move your life forward.
Know Thyself
However you choose to deal with your situation, pay attention to yourself. What works and doesn’t work for you? When did you feel most inspired in your life? Least? What things in your life seem to influence your morale and motivation? No one can answer these questions but you. It’s often harder to figure out and listen to what your own needs are than to take advice from others. The sooner you sit down and allow your own truth to come out, the better off you’ll be.
This is a revised version of this essay, which appeared in my creativity primer book The Dance of The Possible: A mostly honest and completely irreverent guide to creativity.