Burnout Sucks: Early Signs and Solutions (Patreon)

Burnout is the woooorst.

Every artist I know has experienced burnout. It can sneak up on you regardless of how long you've been creating art, regardless of if you have a deadline or not, regardless of who you are and where you work. Burnout sucks.

Nothing is more disheartening than sitting down to work on a project you love, and immediately being overwhelmed with dread or anxiety... but burnout comes in many forms, and it has early symptoms that appear far before you're in panic attack mode. I want to cover some of the early signs, and how I personally have avoided or recovered from burnout over the last several years.

The best medicine is prevention, and you can't avoid overexhaustion without knowing what to look out for. Some (but not all) of the early signs of burnout:

• Being unable to concentrate
• Feeling stagnant, either in your work overall or in a specific project
• Feeling like you're constantly working but not getting anything done
• Being unable to sleep
• Loss of appetite or habitual self-care 
• Perpetual anxiety, apathy, or boredom (even if it's subtle!)
• Easily being overwhelmed by small tasks
• Lashing out at others or isolating yourself
• Absence of positivity 
• Procrastination
• Denial of exhaustion

There are more symptoms, but I've personally experienced every single one of these issues at one point or another. Each one brings it's own struggle, and then they dogpile on top of another until you're panicking. If you're reading that list and only identifying with two or three of them, take that as a potential early red flag. Step back and reflect...be honest with yourself about which ones you're genuinely seeing in your own day-to-day.

To avoid burnout getting worse, each artist has our own strategies. I recommend writing down some guidelines to follow if you struggle with creating boundaries between your "work" art and "fun" art, or between your work time and chill time. Here are some that work for me:

• No drawing or video games in bed! Bed is for sleeping only
• Have 3 meals every day, including an early afternoon lunch break
• Stop working by 6PMish when my partner gets home- working late at night affects my sleep
• Exercise regularly- even a few minutes go a long way
• Forgive myself when I'm not able to exercise regularly 
• Meet up with friends at least twice a week (I schedule these in advance when possible)
• Go outside every day
• Keep a physical list of tasks to complete each day so I can acknowledge what I'm accomplishing (even the small things!)
• Don't respond to work messages/emails on weekends (with exceptions)
• Explore interests outside of art- video games, pickling, journaling, cooking, exploring the neighborhood, TTRPGs, etc.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is to separate your life and your work. The more that those lines blur, the harder it is to identify and tackle work-related burnout. There is SO much more to life than just pouring yourself into your job, and I've found that having other hobbies to enjoy helps a lot. Not to make yourself a better artist or "distract" yourself from your work- but rather to enrich your day and rest your mind.

I also have been striving over the last few weeks to be bored more often, and this alone *essentially* eliminated my last bout of creeping burnout. When our brains are constantly dissecting new information, we get exhausted. So much creativity unintentionally comes from when our minds are at rest- mediating in the morning, not looking at our phones when falling asleep, walking home in silence instead of listening to a podcast- our best ideas come to us in those moments. The key is to let your mind be in solitude- unaffected by other forces or voices. 

In the digital age, we feel pressured to constantly be *doing.* This is absolutely killer to me, and I've been reflecting lately on how that affects our ability to be creative. In order to truly avoid or heal from burnout, we need to *actually* rest. Not scrolling through social media feeds or keeping up on the news or playing phone games or drawing...and DEFINITELY not feeling guilty when we're taking some moments to ourselves. When we're doing something menial like scrolling thru Twitter, we convince ourselves that we're being productive (even if we're getting nothing out of it.) When we're not doing something, we convince ourselves that self-guilting about resting is the only way we can justify it. I dunno yall, that seems pretty fcked up to me when unwinding is literally the solution.

So...next time you're walking home from the train or you have some time in the morning, take a few minutes to observe all the plants next to the sidewalk or to meditate or to not listen to a podcast that's telling you the world is ending. Let go of the cultural pressure that we're supposed to suck as much as possible out of every minute in the day. Breathe, give yourself time away from art, and reap the benefits of rest in the moments that you can.