Look out creatives! Here are signs that you are experiencing a burnout

Experiencing burnout as a creative can be really demanding and could place a weight on your productivity level and how you show up. There are a few signs that are pointers that you are burning out as the day goes by.

Contents

1. You struggle during your prime time 2. No motivation to work 3. Your body is acting up 4. You struggle with staying focused 5. You become less confident and anxious 6. You are prone to making mistakes 7. You struggle with sleep

As a creative, you have ideas, you try to create systems around your idea with execution in view, you do research, you create content, edit content, post it, try to keep in touch with your audience, and there’s a long list of things that go on behind the scenes that people know nothing about.

Burnout is one thing a creative is prone to in his or her niche. Who is a creative? You are a creative when you bring your imaginations, thoughts, and intuition to play in order to execute something or to engage your audience. Most times, it doesn’t have to be a new idea that no one has thought of before.

How to know that you are experiencing burnout as a creative

1. You struggle during your prime time

What is prime time? This is the time of the day when your productivity level for work is at its highest. For creatives, there is no hard and fast rule for when your productive hour of the day lies.

For some creatives, they are most productive in the morning, others in the afternoon, and some, at night. There are some who can work throughout the day and find a hard time deciding what hour of the day works for them because really, they don’t care; any time of the day works for them. Well, maybe they haven’t figured it out yet.

One sign that you are undergoing burnout as a creative is that you are tired all through your productive hour of the day. Too tired that you can’t get things done. You’re just there, trying to look for motivation to go to work, but things don’t seem to be working out. You are also wondering where the sudden tiredness is coming from. You then mentally appeal to your body and your senses to cooperate because there’s plenty of work to be done.

2. No motivation to work

For one, when you first notice that there’s something wrong somewhere, you try to give yourself a mental jack-up to get yourself in the mood, but it doesn’t seem to work. You try to look for motivation everywhere possible because there is work to be done, and it must be done.

Your affirmations that used to do the trick are no longer working, and the music that helps calm you down and set you up for work is not looking effective.

So, most of the time, when you see that nothing appears to be motivating you anymore, then you are probably experiencing burnout as a creative.

3. Your body is acting up

Burnout sometimes feels like tiredness and an unwillingness to work because you can’t seem to get your thoughts to be in one piece. Your body is running a temperature, your head begins to hurt badly, your tummy hurts badly, you feel nauseous, your bones seem to start aching, and you think that you might need to visit the hospital or get quality attention as soon as you can because it’s beginning to tell on you physically.

Even if you want to try and still show up for work, there’s a lot of physical pain and reactions alike to deal with.

4. You struggle with staying focused

In this state of experiencing burnout as a creative, you are battling distractions and your mind seems to wander off, then get back on track and repeat the process again. You can’t stay focused for at least, 25 minutes. Or you stare at a part of the work you’re supposed to do and it feels like there’s an insurmountable barrier in your thoughts. So, you try to think deeply, but nothing appears to be working out. You have a lot of work at hand, yet you can’t focus on anything and be productive.

5. You become less confident and anxious

Work that you could confidently do before now makes you scared and anxious. You become tense and uneasy. When you are experiencing burnout as a creative, you become timid and you feel incompetent because things do not appear to be adding up.

6. You are prone to making mistakes

Mistakes that you would not make on a normal day at work start appearing at you. You begin to do your work the wrong way and sometimes work in a half-baked manner.

7. You struggle with sleep

One would think that sleep would make you feel better, but you would feel even worse. Then, the real struggle to find some sleep begins.

Above all, experiencing burnout as a creative is not a strange thing. It would not last forever. You will be fine, and this will end soon. Hang in there, Creative.

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