Dealing With, and Preventing, Creative Burnout
I’ve had three different conversations this week, with different creators, about burnout.
“Burnout” is when you’re so busy and exhausted for an extended period of time that you end up crashing mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s a real thing that happens to people in many industries.
I believe we have a burnout epidemic in the indie publishing and ttRPG (tabletop RPG) communities. If you relate to one or more of the following, you’re likely on the brink of it:
You’re optimizing almost every hour of your day to get the “most” out of it.
You make a LOT of to-do lists to help feel a sense of control.
You have to work on a project every single day to meet a deadline.
You’re starting to fall out of love with your creative work.
You sleep poorly and ruminate on what needs to be done.
You struggle to relax, feeling guilty for not using rest time to be productive.
Why is this so common in our communities? I think it comes down to the following factors:
Many of us (myself included) work full-time jobs and have to use our rare free time to make art and meet deadlines.
Alternatively, many of us do this work full-time and are trying to make ends meet, taking on a lot of projects since industry pay can sometimes be very low.
The ideation > publication timeline is fast, faster than more traditional publishing industries. We’re worried that if we don’t act on our ideas in time, someone else will.
This resource is designed for people in the tech industry (which has very high rates of burnout, especially those who work in startups) but is applicable to any field. You can take this short quiz to see if you’re close to or experiencing burnout: https://burnoutindex.org/
Dealing with burnout isn’t just a matter of simple self-care. Bouncing back from burnout is hard. Think of it like the volatility of the stock market; once it’s dipped, it takes twice as long to regain what was lost. Burnout works similarly. It’s very likely you’ll come out of it, of course, but you’ve lost time, health, self-esteem, and even money in the interim. Preventing burnout is far better than dealing with it.
Burnout is a rollercoaster.
You make the climb by doing good, steady work; you reach the peak and feel great and excited and set ambitious plans; you plummet to burnout, buried in work; you’re left in the aftermath of crashing with exhaustion and depression. You can get off the rollercoaster by being very conscious of how you’re using your time and finding ways to cut back. It’s not about optimizing yourself so you can do MORE work. It’s about changing your relationship with work and truly evaluating what kind of work fulfills you most, and saying NO to the rest of it. Here are some specific steps I’ve personally taken to better prevent and manage burnout as a creative.
Leave at Least Two Days Open Per Week
When you don’t budget any free time or wiggle room into your schedule before saying yes to a project or job, you overcommit. I learned this the hard way twice in the past two years (and MANY times before then). In early 2019, my cat needed surgery right in the middle of a big deadline. I had booked nearly every hour of my day but didn’t account for an emergency, so I ended up running myself ragged while also trying to deal with the emotional impact of my kitty suffering (she’s doing great now, thank goodness). Then, earlier this year, I had to serve on the jury for a week-long murder trial as I was approaching another big deadline. I was able to get an extension but still had overbooked myself in general, managing a job with side projects as well as family needs. Now, I’ll never say yes to a new project if I can’t comfortably not work on it for at least two days a week. In my context, a “day” means evenings or weekends, time that would normally be “free time” when I’m not working at my day job.
The two day metric may not work for you, but the point is to have enough open time built into your schedule. You can still work on things during this time, but you shouldn’t HAVE to in order to make deadlines. You should also teach yourself how to rest without guilt. This may mean that you have to schedule time to read a book or play a game, some sort of activity that doesn’t require active work. This rest time is imperative to making good art. Being creative on demand is very hard on our brains. We ask our brains to do too much. Developing a good creative process means making rest a habit and a priority. It’s not frivolous to take a break.
Get Some Sleep. I Mean It.
If you’re stressed, irritable, distracted, etc. — you need to sleep. It is not funny or cute to brag about how little sleep you’ve gotten because you’re so busy. Even in the midst of a big project, you have to prioritize sleep. It affects everything in our lives whether we realize it or not. (Read this great book, trust me.) If you don’t have enough time to sleep, cut something out so you can get enough time.
Say “No” to Projects That Don’t Light Your Soul on Fire
For creatives building their careers and audiences, we’re inclined to say “yes” to almost every opportunity that comes our way. Sometimes it’s about money, sometimes it’s about getting our foot in the door. If we don’t say yes, we might never get another opportunity, right? WRONG. It’s better to say yes to the projects and ideas that truly excite and inspire you rather than say yes to just anything for the sake of building a portfolio. When we love what we do, we do it better and more efficiently. This leads to other, better opportunities. You have to go with your gut feeling — if anything in your heart says, “Meh,” you have to listen to that. A project might be cool on paper but is it worth the extra work? Say “yes” to fewer, better projects.
Keep Your Plans and Projects to Yourself — Until They’re Done
I know a lot of creative folks disagree with me on this, but I truly think that keeping projects to yourself until they are almost ready to be released means that you’re more likely to complete it. But when it comes to burnout, announcing a project before the hard work is done means that you’ve front-loaded all the good feelings (excitement, praise, enthusiasm) and now have to buckle down and do the work. When you announce or declare a project, you’re now beholden to the public to get it done on an arbitrary schedule you’ve created OR risk developing a reputation for being unreliable and unable to see ideas through. Don’t overbook yourself before doing the work. Don’t talk or announce a new project until your schedule can handle it.
Differentiate Between “Perceived” Demands and Actual Demands
This is probably the most important takeaway here. When you make a to-do list, it’s likely filled with everything you want to achieve that day (or week, however long your to-do list is for). Take that list and slash it in half. What is something that absolutely has to get done that day? Is someone waiting on you for it? Is it something that has a specific deadline (like registering your car or picking up a prescription)? Those are the actual demands. "Perceived” demands are tasks like: responding to a non-urgent email the second it comes in; agreeing to a last-minute addition to a project that wasn’t part of the original scope; responding to every message on social media; etc. It’s not that these types of tasks aren’t important, just that they take up your time and don’t necessarily help you make meaningful progress. (Setting boundaries and expectations for creative projects warrants a whole other blog post.) Prioritize relentlessly.
Create Without Pressure
I set up the #FlashFicFeb writing challenge in December when I was just coming out of a rough November, questioning if I even wanted to continue writing at all. The idea of writing for fun without pressure sounded so appealing to me, since I still had ideas and still felt that tug to write, which has been a part of me my whole life. The issue was that everything I was currently tasked to write was for a professional contract and I had completely pushed off my own projects, and writing anything felt SO hard. Making art for fun and not work helps remind you of why you love doing this all in the first place. We get lost in the climb to success.
This excellent article sums it up best:
As a creative, one of the hardest transition is going from creating for the sake-of-it to creating for clients, an audience, a deadline, and a budget. The time allocated to creating without purpose shrinks dramatically. Everything needs to become useful: lyrics for a new song; a screenplay for a short film; a drawing for the portfolio, a design for your shop. And when you enter that cycle, creating becomes heavier, limited, and contrived by all the guidelines it needs to follow. That’s when a burnout arises. When no room is left for mistakes, trials, and for connecting with your muse, your element, your zone, your flow; this thing that makes hours feel like minutes. The paradox, of course, is that when you’re in burnout mode, you can’t produce from that special place; but to get out of your burnout, you need to find your way back to that space. So how do you do that? I found producing a massive amount of things is one of the most efficient ways out. Without rules, expectations or judgment. You clean the house by getting all the dust out.
— What Being in a Devastating Creative Burnout Taught Me About Life, CreativeLive Blog
Ultimately, preventing burnout comes down to this: your creative work is not more important than you and your mental, physical, and emotional health. It’s important — necessary, even — to set and achieve goals but they should never come at a steep personal cost. As a society, we glamorize overwork and the “hustle” to succeed. You can work hard and make awesome stuff without it coming at the expense of your well-being. Artists don’t have to struggle to make good art. The best work you’ll ever create is done so when you’re at your best self.
P.S. My friend TL liked the phrase “prioritize relentlessly” and wanted to put it on a Post-It, so I made a desktop wallpaper for you. Right-click and hold the image below to download the full size. Enjoy!
