Preventing creative-burnout

Writing Guide 03

Many people know it, some will get to know it, some have already found techniques to prevent it:

I'm talking about creative burnout. Especially in creative fields, it is difficult to draw a line between professional and private life, especially when that line is so thin. At the beginning of self-employment, for example, it is an almost seamless transition, because all of a sudden you have to take responsibility for adhering to regular working hours and simultaneously being noticed in the fiercely competitive market. Many content creators, artists, authors... experience such creative burnout over the course of their careers because they do not learn to set and enforce these boundaries. I will show you in this post how to overcome this hurdle for your sustainable well-being:

Find something that you enjoy and don't get paid for - in other words, a hobby.

Burnout, in my view, occurs when we do too little of what we enjoy. So take time every day for the things you enjoy doing. That could be half an hour of reading in the evening instead of scrolling through social media, or taking a walk through the city or the forest in the afternoon. Whatever does you good and brings lasting joy.

Time management is not the solution. Timeblocking is.

The difference for me is that in time management, you try to complete as many tasks as possible within a certain period, while with time blocking, you become aware of how much time you really need for a task and create an overview from which you logically allocate your time. For example, if you write a blog and allocate ten minutes per post, you can set a stopwatch each time and find out how long you actually spend writing it. If you then end up working on a post for thirty minutes, maybe even an hour or more, you can adjust your time blocking so that you know exactly when and how many posts you can write. So you have a set period for each task during which you focus solely on it. Time blocking works particularly well when you want to juggle multiple hobbies and/or jobs.

Pomodoro timer.

I can't repeat it often enough, but these timers work wonders. Especially on the days when you feel overwhelmed by your never-ending to-do list, it motivates you to dedicate twenty-five minutes to a task and then take a break. With the timers, you have a specific amount of time to complete the tasks before you can return to what you enjoy doing. The motivation from this is incredible, try it yourself. On YouTube, there are also many timers with music, or so-called "study with me" videos that you can watch.

The most important and simplest tip comes at the end: If you need a break, take one. It has already been proven that workers who work a four-day week are more productive on those days than in a regular workweek. That means you can allow yourself to take a break when you need one, to start your projects "fresh" with renewed energy.

Until the next post, I wish you a wonderful time.

Lady Elisa Marie