Burn Out Advice

I have not been very creative lately. Work keeps me busy, and then I have a bunch of personal responsibilities to take care of. Then when I have free time I’m so exhausted that I play a game or something else to relax, then I feel bad afterwards.

How do y’all deal with this? I’m happy that I keep up my writing pretty consistently, but besides that I haven’t been able to:

  • write my novel
  • make any music
  • finish making my game

it’s a bummer ngl. if y’all got tips hmu

8 Likes

I had this sorta problem when i worked previous jobs where i had to commute and shit. I think something that will work is you’re just gonna have to make some hard choices about what you want to do.

Gaming is fun, but maybe one or two nights a week (Tuesday & Thursday for example) you just have to say “im gonna spend my free time writing that novel, or working on music.” It sorta sucks, but also doing creative work is enjoyable in and of itself, so it should be easier once you get into the swing of it.

5 Likes

Back when i worked shitty shifts and clopens at :dart: what ended up helping me was setting up a schedule for myself.

It sounds like some insane “rise and grind” bullshit but it honestly helped, especially when I wanted to play MMOs, work out, and also finish drawings.

I had written away the hours I would be at work/commuting but then started scheduling what I wanted to do when I got home and for how long I wanted to do each thing. (I usually forced myself to do some stretching/30-40 min workouts once I got home to try and get some energy back.) and then follow my plans for that day.

Obviously it’s good to give yourself wiggle room and not be hard on yourself when stuff doesn’t work out (bc there were definitely days I just kind of gave up and went back to bed lol) but it helped to push me to get the ball rolling.

Honestly, even if i didn’t follow the schedule to a T, just seeing it in front of me helped me out a lot.

I’m the type of person that sometimes needs a Nuclear option to get things done (for example: I often had to block frequently visited websites from myself in college in order to get stuff done) so having stuff follow some sort of Order is kind of needed for me personally. I’m not sure if it will help you or not but it might be worth a shot?

9 Likes

The most effective thing we ever did was find someone who will pester us daily to do more fulfilling hobbies or spend time on our projects.

Before that, uhh, we procrastinated for so long that we got fed up and channeled the frustration from not ever pursuing our goals into actually starting to draw again… and then it somehow became fun and something we wanted to do regularly… but that’s not very helpful :sweat_smile:

4 Likes

I don’t think I really have much usable advice that isn’t completely obvious, but from one ADHD struggle bus-er to another, I hear you and it sucks and I’m sorry :sob:

3 Likes

I generally go with something like Minty’s method, although more loose. I basically give myself weekly homework rather than daily/hourly scheduling. Week by week I think through all the things I should do and all the things I want to do and just tell myself a couple of “before the week is over I will do the laundry” and “before the week is over I will have had one long drawing session”

With this method I don’t actually end up planning a lot of things to get done… But I find that for me personally just doing one thing opens the door for me to do more things, it’s kind of a balancing act between making sure I don’t overwhelm myself with too many plans while still prodding myself a bit to actually get stuff done. I’m only forcing myself to get laundry done this week, but while I’m at it lugging clothes around and leaving the apartment to go to the laundry room I end up also taking out the recycling and cleaning up the room a bit. I’m only forcing myself to draw once this week, but I get something I really like going and I have the drive to keep prodding on it the next day.

And as Minty said I don’t hold myself to it strictly, if something suddenly comes up or if I’m feeling bad then it’s fine to skip my homework.

It’s hard, I get really knocked out by work too, my workdays are basically 11 hours with the commute and I’m just fully dead in the evenings, I hope you can find something that works for you.

6 Likes

that_one_screencap_from_invincible.png

I mean my personal pride does not have me at this point in my life being willing to half-ass my creative output. And if I can’t do something to my satisfaction, I won’t bother putting it out. I may do some work on it but there’s no guarantee I’ll finish a project.

2 Likes

For me a lot of it is picking at some related thing which does actually bring me relaxation or fun and picking at that during my typical decomp-time. Like I’m not gonna shouldn’t spend relaxation time working on my big priority project, but I should work on fun little WIPs that have been burning a hole in the back of my brain or prod at silly little “wouldn’t it be cool” ideas that I’d never do because I don’t have the time or energy. If I’ve got that spirit in mind it makes it easier to go back to another project and keep that momentum.

3 Likes

I think it comes down to managing your expectations for yourself and keeping that reasonable. For starters, not feeling bad about taking time to relax because relaxing and refreshing is a big part of recovering from burn-out.

Which, yeah, “don’t feel bad” is terrible advice 'cause it’s not like we have control over that. So, like what Minty said, putting together a schedule helps. Even if you only set aside like, 30 minutes to work on one of your projects, it can help jumpstart you thinking about it, and if it’s a small enough timeframe, it’s easier to set aside before or after your relaxation stuff because it’s not as much of a commitment. And if you don’t end up being creative during that time, being a smaller piece of time can help you feel less bad about it, because at least you did set aside time for it. And once you do get in the groove and get going, you can go for longer if you need to.

It probably won’t help to say that it’s also okay and reasonable to put your bigger creative projects on hold because you are juggling a whole lot of things, and will be for several months to come, and you aren’t accountable to anyone but yourself for them, and that none of that means you are any less of a creative or valued person. But I’m gonna say it anyway because it’s way too easy for us as ADHDers to sort of get into that pattern of “I feel bad” “making cool things makes me feel less bad” “rad” “wait now I feel bad for not making cool things” and it’s also too easy to get into the pattern of “if my output is not at 110% then what is the POINT it needs to be that good for survival reasons p.s. I would never judge anyone else for this, all my self-censure is for me alone” :smiling_face_with_tear:

7 Likes

thanks everyone, some takesaways:

pull back on the newsletter

i’ve come to realize that i’m putting a lot of pressure on myself with the newsletter which is completely going against the grain of why i switched from a traditional blog to a digital garden in the first place. gonna either switch to biweekly or only put it out after i’ve had a bunch of stuff collected along with the usual link-sharing i’ve been doing

themed days

gonna take Tue/Wed for myself from now on and not hang out in the discord chat in the evenings like I usually do (love y’all but M/Th/F should be enough lol). Unless i’m using the focus together channel I made, so I can get some stuff done.

go easier on myself

i very holistically looked at what i’ve been up against lately:

  • planning a wedding
  • planning a trip for that wedding
  • trying to sell a car
  • getting a new boss that’s basically tripled my workload
  • taking care of my mom while she’s been a little more sick than usual

i have decided that, per @sharksonaplane, I am in fact doing a lot compared to my life events. I’m going try and make a “BQ Value” or something like that to compare against my creative output. If I’m at a 7/10 then it makes sense that i’m at a creative output level of 3/10 in response.

very helpful, thanks again everynyan (stealing this from @silas lol)

10 Likes

Hough, think I need to do that workload/life math myself also. There’s a pretty clear line between “getting overloaded” and “fucking up badly at work” in my recent life events. Good luck with your unfuckening and I hope the burnout eases

4 Likes