How to Avoid Burnout

There’s nothing worse than feeling like all your creativity and productivity has been sucked dry. Hitting ‘The Wall’ at work or when you’re studying is one thing, but facing absolute burnout when it comes to your own creative passions, side projects and hobbies is quite another. What you need to do is learn to hit the pause button from time to time.

Recently, the subject of burnout has been discussed by many prominent YouTubers and Twitch broadcasters, who spoke up on the difficulties of having to create daily content at higher and higher qualities for their audiences. We think it’s awesome to see these content creators speak up about burnout and raise awareness, so we thought we would give you some help in what to do to avoid this as we know it isn’t just these social media stars who suffer.

What is Burnout?

Burnout affects your energy, making you feel both physically and emotionally drained (even though you had a huge Saturday morning lay in). It could make you feel negative, cynical or bored of your work. You may find yourself struggling to concentrate, or even worse: struggling to sleep or be creative! 😱

A good place to start is to write down the things that are stressing you out. What’s making you anxious? What are you currently finding exhausting? What should you do about it? Take time out? Sure. But how do you do that and where do you start?

Let’s get physical

Many people recommend the gym or running but for some, a long walk in fresh air will do the trick. You don’t have to do this alone, find a friend and have a long de-stressing gossip while you walk! Exercise makes us feel good thanks to it creating little neurons in your brain called endorphins (the same thing happens when we eat chocolate too!) Remember you need to continue to eat healthily, drink lots of water and get a good night sleep too.

Mental escapes

While it will help you in some way to (literally) run away from your burnout, mental escapes are crucial in giving yourself a healthy dose of distraction.

For some people, creative activities (whether it’s writing, vlogging, gaming etc) involve spending significant time indoors and alone. Be sure to plan cool things to do with your mates and family to make sure you stay sociable. Anything that takes your mind off things will be good for both your mental health and your creativity:

Watch a film
Cook dinner
Watch a TV show
Play a sport
Learn another language
Play a game
Pick up some adult colouring books
Bake a cake

[full-width-figure image=”https://dtl-staging.org/2020/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/burnoutpic.jpg”]

Diversify your creations

Sometimes we need to do something a little different to jumpstart our brain into thinking differently… If you’ve spent the last week reading through what feels like hundreds of books for research or study, try drawing some ideas down instead or speak them out loud to a friend. It will help you to see things from a different perspective which is crucial in helping you over the roadblock in your mind. Alternatively, do something creative that you’ve never tried before.

Take a break

Sometimes we just need to do nothing. Making sure you have an escape from everything is equally important, we all deserve a break after all!

Make a cup of tea
Have a duvet day
Practise mindfulness: Go for a walk in the countryside, beach or a park and enjoy the sights and sounds around you.
Lay on your bed and listen to music
Meditate – find out how to do that here.

Don’t forget to give yourself some downtime!