Productive vs. Busy in a World of Burnout
As work/life/creative boundaries blur, many of us have a harder time leaving our work tasks at the office, and our art tasks at the studio. It can be tempting to carry tasks over into the personal realm. Now more than ever we are feeling the pressure to be as productive at home as we are in our day-job lives.
It should be okay to set aside time for ourselves. Though still that can initially feel like a bad thing. A selfish act. We are busier than ever, but that also means we are more at risk for burnout than ever. Take some time today for yourself, head to a coffee shop, create in your bullet journal you forgot you started, and breathe.
Don’t you dare feel guilty.
Maybe you’ve had a creative hobby for a long time and people are just now starting to get interested in what you have to offer. With the pandemic in place, maybe now you finally have found the time to invest in your creative hobby and turn it into a legitimate side hustle.
One thing I forgot along my creative side hustle journey, is that I needed to do it for me. It can be so exciting that people want your creations that you immediately go into service mode. Try to meet all demands and desires of your friends, family, and even Instagram audience.
There’s school, work, our pets, our significant others, trying to eat the right foods, trying to make sure we exercise, pay bills on time, don’t forget to renew your car tabs, filing unemployment, countless interviews, and on top of that there’s now this added pressure to post how happy you are on social media.
You have to create an Instagram page, then create a business Facebook page, then maybe a twitter, definitely a TikTok, possibly a YouTube channel, but start out with a podcast...it’s a lot. It’s another full time job. And we find ourselves thinking about the days when we stressed about who was in our top 8 on MySpace.
So let’s talk about Busy vs. Productive. With the initial throw of people becoming interested in your creations and encouraging you through purchases, follows, words of affirmation it’s a bit of an adrenaline rush to start. You roll with the punches. You figure it out as you go and you don’t look back. It's exciting. And you are working so damn hard...and that’s the difference. If you feel so overly busy and you just have too much to do and are constantly working overtime to get everything done, you’re busy, not productive. Yes, you may get a lot done being busy, but the downside is you are going to end up completely burnt out. So here are 3 questions I want you to ask yourself to find out if you are headed toward burnout, and how to turn things around if you are.
Question 1:
Do you always feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day?
Like you are never able to finish all the things you have to do, and are constantly feeling overwhelmed? It might seem like you have an endless list of tasks that only gets longer. Check out this podcast episode on Time Management! It sounds cliche and you’re probably cringing as you read the words, but managing your time is key! Especially as an artist that is still working the day job grind. Trust me, after you listen to this podcast you will let out a sigh of relief!
Question 2:
How often are you comparing yourself to other creatives?
How much time do you spend scrolling through social media, always gathering an abundance of inspiration but never having the time to act on it? You might think to yourself what a great idea, I definitely want to try something like that and put my own spin on it! Then time passes, and more time passes, and maybe a little bit more time passes until you completely forget about it. Then you might find yourself feeling sad or guilty or disappointed in yourself for being lazy. Here’s my tip. Stop everything you’re doing. Head to your favorite coffee shop, don’t look at social media for a full day, and think. Really intentionally think. Take the day to go through all that inspiration you’ve been saving up, and plan out realistic times in your calendar of when you can execute it. Go one by one. Then, once you have your creative tasks planned out on your calendar, I want you to only focus on completing those tasks for as long as you can, and don’t look at other creative accounts on social media until you’ve finished your own creative tasks and have posted them. There are two types of people on social media. The ones who watch people create, and the ones who create. It’s your turn to be the one that creates.
Question 3:
Do you still enjoy creating what you are creating?
Be honest. It’s totally okay if you’ve lost that initial joy a little bit. It’s natural, I promise. This might even be more of a question of quantity vs. quality. Not necessarily the quality of your creations, but the quality of life you have been experiencing since you started investing time and money into your creations. If the answer to this question is, yes I still enjoy creating what I am creating, then you got this! If the answer to this question is, no I don’t really enjoy creating what I am creating as much anymore, write down why. Take a breath. Slow down. Ask why? What is taking away from that initial joy. Is it because you feel drained energy wise? Is it because you’ve been too focused on ordering the next batch of stickers, and maybe that just doesn’t feel as authentic to you as a creative anymore? Once you’ve written down your answer. Then go back and write down all the reasons why you started creating. Why you initially enjoyed it. Take your first written answer and your second explanation and compare the two. Find the spaces where things aren’t connecting anymore, rewrite your answer of what your ideal balance of creating and enjoying what you create is. Give yourself a little reminder of working towards your balance, and why you started every time you’re stressed that you aren’t prepared enough for your next art showing or even your next Instagram post.
