How Burnout leads to the Creative Block
On December 2022 up to March 2023,
About 4 months I encountered a serious obstacle that sometimes occur in my life.
Yes, it was a creative block. During that time, I didn’t realize that I was burned out because I never claimed myself as one whenever I’m exhausted.
How did I realize it? Well, this might be a long story, but I wrote briefly in this article.
The Burnout Stages
It first happened when I couldn’t design a web interface for a recent project. This sounds like an excuse, but to get out from the situation, I pushed myself so hard to keep designing whatever looks likes.
Day by day, I got exhausted not only by thinking how to design like I used to, but also my physic is already started to be fatigued and got certain headaches. It’s draining too much energy inside me.
That was only occur for 3–5 days, next I believed it was just a fatigue not burn out.
What’s the differences between two of them?
Apparently there is a difference.
So, as a designer who has need to be creative all the time, burnout is something we should prevent.
Then it took 4 months to realize that I was burned out because I couldn’t continue to handle the stress, like overthinking, insomnia, mood swing, and constantly cannot design or just thinking about the inspiration about design as usual. Well … That sucks.
Imagine you are working in a design and tech field, then all of sudden you have no idea to design something when you got certain tasks to design, thinking, and kind of stuff at your work and your side projects. The question is,
How can I get out from this situation? How I overcome this?
Nobody taught about this before. What should I do? Should I cancel all the tasks or simply saying “Sorry I’m in the middle of burnout phase” it might sounds cheeky, absurd, and too much excuses. And someone might referred that as
Ah she doesn’t want to do the work because she’s lazy and always making that thing as an excuse.
So, I chose to be quiet and continue doing my daily activities like go to the gym, face the obstacles, find out the solution, keep designing, and repeat. Then, I got stuck.
Nowhere to go.
Creative Block Stages
What you should do when you got a burnout is resting. Cutting out of all distractions, take a walk for 15–20 mins in outside or park, meditation, or seeking to your therapist if you think there is no solution.
But, in this case, my burnout was leading me to the creative block. I already do the things to handle my burnout, but for my creative blocks, still no clue. Then, what did you do?
- I figured it out my burnout that turned into creative blocks:
- I had no idea where to start a design project.
- I constantly exhausted.
- I got overwhelmed by the pressure that I acquired.
- I expected something to be perfect.
- I got procrastinated things all the time.
- I couldn’t imitate or innovate someone’s design like I used to.
- Too much thinking, less doing.
- A brain fog because received too much information at one time.
However this kind of thing cannot be helped by just sleeping or working out, you can still have a creative block even you’re consistently going to work out, walking at the park, taking a rest. If this might occur again and I still don’t know how to overcome it, it could waste so much time for a long period.
How I overcome these two fellas
Creativity is infinite resource. It must be trained like a muscle.
When I encountered this, I didn’t read any articles to solve my problem because I must know what’s wrong inside me first before I take another steps. So, I found a solution based on what I experienced.
I called it as “triggers”.
Because to attract my visual sense to come back is by triggering it. But, how did I do that?
Challenge myself to design simple thing
I did it. Challenge myself to take other side projects, just one project to revamp a website of food industry. It’s hard when you’re in the middle of nowhere, then you must keep going to continue the journey.
I rarely asked or mentoring about my own problems like “Creative Block” to anyone even my own mentor.
Since maybe they will not give me any clues either and ended up I don’t get the answer I wanted.
Finally I made it through to design a landing page, only one page, but it helped me to trigger my visual sense. I could see what I made it’s total shit, on Figma canvas the design is really messy and I got two times to revise my design.
Yes, it was the iteration.
Yet, it helped me to breakthrough the phases of creative block.
Resting doesn’t mean quit or stop.
Sometimes people have misconception about resting.
Take a few days, months, years to pause or break from things that drain your energy or even peace is a good step.
Resting doesn’t mean you’re quit or stop from doing your things, it means you’re cared enough about yourself. You’re aware what is wrong with you, what is making you stuck. You can take resting phase as a moment for you to boost the energy.
By reducing the social media from your phone screen, walking or touching the grass, less reading information that is too overwhelmed or anything that can be the source of your blocks to be creative. Sometimes, for me, taking a rest need a long period of time.
And I realized that many artists or creators, for instance a comic author hiatus from several days or even years just to get their creativity back.
So, why don’t we try the same thing?
Therefore, these two techniques I tried to implement whenever I got a creative block and somehow it works to tackle the burnout because as a person who has high demand in creativity, it’s crucial to be aware of these things.
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