How to Make a Strong Comeback from Creative Burnout

Inside: Do you find yourself dreading what was once your passion? If you’re in the middle of creative burnout, this is the guide for you.

I never imagined seeing this day. This year marks my 10th year working as a bedside nurse. In a field notorious for burnout, I feel fortunate to have (mostly) avoided it. I treated burnout like my biggest occupational hazard and did everything I could to prevent it.

My secret has been having something that excited me outside of work: writing for this blog. Having a passion project meant that I didn’t think much about work after I clocked out. It was the perfect solution.

That is, until I hit creative burnout.

The truth is that burnout can affect anyone in any field. I write about slower living, but that didn’t make me immune to it. Fortunately, my own journey has taught me that not only can we overcome creative burnout, but we can grow from it as well. 

What is Creative Burnout?

Creative burnout is a state of exhaustion that results from prolonged overwork and stress in creative work.

Scott Berkun wrote, “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.” 

This type of burnout isn’t the same as a creative rut where you feel dull and uninspired (often due to too much routine). It’s also different from a creative block where you can’t seem to generate new ideas (such as writer’s block).

In creative burnout, you’re drained to the point of wanting to throw in the towel altogether. You can’t stand looking at your latest work for another second. You might find yourself hating the passion you once loved. Or worse, you’re indifferent and just don’t care anymore.

Symptoms of Creative Burnout

Creative burnout can manifest itself as changes in the following areas:

Motivation

Lack of enthusiasm, procrastination, feelings of dread, persistent Sunday Scaries

Performance

Difficulty concentrating, missed deadlines, increased absenteeism

Outlook

Self-doubt, questioning meaning and purpose, cynicism and disillusionment, wishing for a different life

Health

Anxiety and depression, fatigue and changes in sleep, unexplained headaches or digestive issues, frequent illness

Common Causes of Creative Burnout

1. An Achievement Mindset

If you have an achievement mentality, you measure your creativity by what you produce. You feel a sense of disappointment if you don’t meet your goals. If you do reach your goals, you may still feel dissatisfied, so you continue to strive. Or, you have a fear of failure that keeps you from resting from your work. Creativity becomes an ever-moving target, rather than a craft you enjoy. 

2. The Pressure to Monetize

Thanks to our hustle culture (and social media), you feel a nagging pressure to monetize what you create. When you take a break, you feel guilty about what you could be doing to get ahead. Social comparison has eaten you alive.

Your creative pursuit used to be a therapeutic sanctuary that you couldn’t wait to get to. Now it’s a stress-inducing side hustle or, worse, a second job.

Instead of being something you want to do, your passion is now something you have to do. 

3. The Creation Treadmill

If you have strict deadlines, the constant push to produce can kill your creativity. Like any kind of work, creative work can become a non-stop treadmill—and a daily grind. You end up forgetting why you’re running on the treadmill, yet you keep pounding away.

In our 24/7 productivity-focused society, it’s easier to end up here than you might think. But Psalm 127:1-2 reminds us, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain…In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves” (NIV).

4. Impossibly High Standards

If you’re like many people in creative burnout, you’re a perfectionist who puts more pressure on yourself than anyone else does. You take yourself too seriously and expect yourself to be better than you are (sorry to break it to you!).

Rain, shine, or flu, you show up, putting in the work every day to maintain a “daily habit.” Meanwhile, your creative self cries out for a break—and some grace.

5. An Unbalanced Life

You’re so passionate about your creative endeavors that they’ve taken over your life. You eat, breathe, and sleep your current project. When among family and friends, you’re secretly still in obsessive problem-solving mode. You don’t remember the last time you took a real break (does chugging a Slurpee while scrolling Instagram count?).

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How to Deal with Creative Burnout

1. Walk away for a while.

When you first recognize the symptoms of creative burnout, take a break. The earlier, the better. If you’re passionate about your work, burnout can be difficult to admit. It’s scary when we don’t know what the fallout will look like.

But you need time and distance to get an accurate picture of what’s going on. Pushing through burnout will only make things worse. At this point, you’re like a car stuck in mud. The harder you spin your wheels, the deeper you sink. 

2. Listen to your body.

Our bodies often warn us of impending burnout, but we tend to ignore the signs.

Perhaps you’ve been getting more headaches. You wake up every day at 4 a.m. Or you visit the bathroom more often than you did during your last overseas vacation. If so, your stress hormones may be stuck in overdrive. 

Learn to listen to your body (not just when you’re hungry). Do you need to go to bed before midnight? Eat more real food and less Cup of Noodles? Do you need to get off the couch and move? Or stop everything and go lie down on the couch?

3. Start a Silver Linings List.

Burnout can lead us to become pessimistic and cynical. This glass-half-empty perspective can then cause us to view our creative work—and lives—more negatively.

One way to combat this is to keep a Silver Linings List naming three positive things amidst today’s challenges. Consider things that you’ve learned, ways you’ve grown, an aspect of God’s character, or answered prayer. 

Studies show that our brains have a negativity bias. Our default is to focus on the negatives in our lives and the world.

When we intentionally train our minds to look for the good, we develop a more positive mindset. We trace (and record) God’s hand moving throughout our lives. And we increase our resiliency to bounce back from creative burnout.

4. Pick up an unrelated creative hobby.

Use the time off to explore a different creative hobby. Consider an activity that you’ve always been curious about, or one that you haven’t had time for. This other hobby (or hobbies) will keep your creative juices flowing. 

It’ll also give you an opportunity to play without pressure. And you’ll get much-needed mental disconnection from your usual creative work. You don’t want to spend all your time dwelling on your burnout.

5. Rekindle your first love.

My guess is that when you started out, you created for yourself and loved your craft. Over time, you adapted to only creating for others and lost that passion. When you feel ready, it’s time to recapture that first love.

Start creating again, but take it little by little. This time, go back to creating for yourself. Get back in touch with what you first loved.

What drew you to this craft? What brought you the most joy? In what setting do you feel most creative? When does your creativity feel super-charged? And what is your big-picture “why”?

6. Handle your creativity with kid gloves.

Your creativity is fragile right now, so be sure to treat it that way. If you overdo it, you risk slipping right back into burnout mode. 

Create only when you feel up to it. Shut down that inner taskmaster, and stop working before you get tired. If you used to work in one-hour chunks, try working for 20 minutes at a time. 

By intentionally limiting yourself, you leave yourself hungry for more creativity. You start to associate creativity with positivity again. 

7. Chuck all rules out the window. 

If you’re burned out, chances are you’ve gotten stuck in a formula. If this is the case, here’s an exercise. Get out a pen and paper. Write down all the “I should” rules that you follow, consciously and unconsciously.

Then draw a big red X over the list and burn it in your next campfire.

Tell the gurus to take the day off. For the time being, create however you want. Imagine what you would do if you had no constraints. Design something completely different. Try new approaches without necessarily finishing.

Burnout just might be a fork in the road where the direction of your creative work pivots altogether. 

8. Find a creative partner or community.

No matter what, you won’t be your best creative self in a vacuum. Creative friends provide a place for exchanging ideas, getting feedback, and receiving encouragement. They can also support us if we do burn out.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” 

The people we spend time with have the power to shape us. Jim Rohn famously once said, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” How many of your five people are creative?

A Fresh Beginning

Recovering from creative burnout is not a one-time event, but rather a journey. Fortunately, for Christians, it’s not a wasted one. Romans 8:28 reminds us, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

So watch God redeem this time as only He can. Allow Him to teach you. He can restore your dreams and bring a new season of fresh creativity. God did it for me—and He can do it for you.

What led to your creative burnout? What will you do about it now?

For more on this topic:

How to Burn Out and Kill Your Creativity

How You Can Use Creative Rest to Restore Your Creativity

How to Understand and Harness the Power of Your Creativity Cycle

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Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash