Maintaining a creative mindset is hard because creative work asks for energy, taste, nerve, and patience at the same time. Under pressure, that combination can turn a normal slow patch into creative burnout or a full creative block.
The fear of burnout is enough to sap anyone’s energy. When it strikes, it is hard to imagine recovering from it, and projects that start with inspiration can derail at the slightest hurdle, leaving you drained and wondering whether you have lost your touch.
I know the feeling all too well.
All too often I will dive into a new post, fired up and coasting on my initial momentum, only to get 500 words of a rough outline and then flat-line. Then the slog begins to finish it since it is already in the calendar and now has a deadline.
This slowed my progress to a crawl, which I would beat myself up over. This cycle repeated until the stress, among other things, drove me to seek therapy.
What I am trying to say is that creativity is taxing, scary, emotional work. Some weeks I write 4-5 long-form, high-quality articles and still have time left over to give my brain a break. Other weeks, I try not to fall behind, stress myself out, and waste a whole week staring at text files full of junk.
These are the attitudes and practices that help me keep hold of a creative mindset when pressure starts to turn work into a grind.
Creativity isn’t consistent: accept it
The worst thing you can do when struggling with creativity is to beat yourself up about it.
Trust me. Been there, done that, had the therapy. It does not do you any favors.
As much as you or your boss would love for everyone to consistently produce solid, inspired work, it is not possible. Even David Ogilvy said he only had a few big ideas in his entire career. When you are feeling beat, remember that.
There will be days where you are the master of your thoughts, with great ideas and the ability to express them well. There will be more days where you have no energy to express the ideas you cannot get anyway. Coming up totally blank is an important part of the process.
We are used to consistency in life. We are used to a fixed sleep cycle, meal times, and working hours. When those expectations do not apply to the work we do, it is painfully frustrating.
Anything you put into your mind, whether it is an idea, a paragraph of a book, or a poster you saw on your way to work, can keep turning in your subconscious until it is well-formed enough to come out as a tangible stream of thoughts.
Accept that you are a human, not a high-output robot. Some people get too deep into productivity systems, a mindset summed up well by Quinn Norton:
Productivity never asks what it builds, just how much of it can be piled up before we leave or die.
Quinn Norton, Against Productivity (This Essay Took Four Years to Write)
When you focus on pure output, you overlook the fact that your brain needs time to relax between sprints. Give yourself time to come up with truly great ideas, instead of forcing poorly formed ones out, hating them, and killing them.
Manage your admin to give more time to large tasks
Whether you get promoted or take on extra duties, it is unlikely that you will do one thing all day, every day.
I was hired as a writer. I had the entire day, other than review calls, to research, plan, write, and edit my work. There was not much to interrupt my flow and derail my creative mindset.
Then my tasks expanded, and before I knew it I was drowning in smaller tasks, struggling to find enough time to settle down, avoid distractions, and get a chunk of work done.
Meetings, emails, customer support duty, employee onboarding, and anything else that is not your main job can stop a large project before it starts.
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham has seen this issue in himself and his co-workers:
If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all?
Paul Graham, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
I first tried to solve this by bottling up all of my extra tasks and having one day per week to blast through all of them. The rest of the week could then be dedicated to my regular, larger duties.
This did not work for long. My usual days would meander with little urgency, leading to working overtime in the evening just to hit my deadlines. On my admin days I would then struggle to wake up, feel overwhelmed by the number of small tasks, and end the day mentally exhausted.
Since I am not as superhuman as Graham, I tackled my admin stress differently. Instead of splitting my tasks by day, I returned to doing basic admin work and my regular tasks throughout the week. However, I now only go to admin duties after lunchtime.
I get my most creative work done at the beginning of the day when my mind is fresh, so it makes sense to tackle at least part of the larger projects first thing. Then, when I have spent most of my energy building momentum, I switch to getting a few smaller tasks done before I crash.
It is the best of both worlds. I do not have a mountain of admin to deal with at once, but most of my energy is still dedicated to the tasks I was mainly hired to do.
Don’t give in to impostor syndrome
Have you ever felt like you are not good enough? That you do not deserve your accolades? As if, one day, you will be realized for the fraud you are?
That is called impostor syndrome, and it is a horrible thing.
In a 1978 paper, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes reported a surprising level of anxiety in high-achieving women, namely PhDs and professors. They coined the term impostor phenomenon, often called impostor syndrome, and described a pattern where achievements do not always quiet the belief that success is undeserved.
[When someone] persists in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.
Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women
Although their original study focused on women, later examinations have shown, and Clance has agreed, that it can affect people across genders and roles. The American Psychological Association also notes that it is especially common among high achievers.
You externalize your success, crediting other people’s poor judgment or pity for your achievements. You feel like your ability to do meaningful creative work is so transient and fragile that it could soon be gone forever.
Again, I have been there. I often return there. I know what it is like. That is why I know how important it is to stop impostor syndrome interfering with your creative mindset.
Here is how to use it to your advantage:
- Embrace it. It is okay to be scared.
- Know that being scared means you have something to lose.
- Having something to lose means you have succeeded in some way.
- Success means you are doing it right.
- Keep a log of your achievements to remind yourself of your successes, no matter how small.
- Document your processes to stop doubting your methods.
- Keep a folder of confidence boosters, such as nice comments people have left on your work.
- Use fear and deadlines to kick yourself into working.
- Ignore useless criticism, but listen to constructive comments.
After all, even if you are getting praise for something you think you did not do, surely it is better to ride out the wave for as long as possible?
Know that time invested does not equal quality or quantity of work
We all know the Pareto principle. It states that 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input. With this in mind, does it not make sense that sometimes the first half-hour you spend on a task will be where most of the useful progress happens?
This article almost did not get written. I had the idea in my head for a while, and I was in a waiting room with my notebook. I knew that I had less than half an hour to wait, so I was going to use that time to plan out some of my admin tasks.
Instead, I wrote the bulk of this article in barely legible handwriting and have since spent the day editing it and a couple of other pieces.
That is the 80/20 principle at work, right in front of my eyes.
By internalizing this principle, it becomes much easier to motivate yourself to spend just 10 minutes on a task when you are procrastinating.
Switching between tasks is not ideal. Research from Gloria Mark and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine found that after interruptions, people can take around 23 minutes to return to the original task. That said, the longer you spend on a single task, the less useful output each extra minute may yield.
Even if you do not put the 80/20 rule into strict practice, try to identify when your mind starts to wander and how long it takes after starting work on a task for your progress to slow.
Once you know when this is happening, stop. Have a break. Switch to another task. Come back later. Creativity is not consistent, and neither is focus, motivation, or productivity. The best you can do is roll with the punches and find something else you are interested in doing to kickstart your progress.
Don’t beat yourself up: it wrecks your creative mindset
I know I said this earlier, but it is worth saying again.
Do not beat yourself up if you do not hit your targets.
It will not change what you have already done, and it will only cause further stress that makes future work even harder.
Instead, try asking yourself why you are not hitting your targets. For example:
- Is my personal life affecting my work?
- Am I being assigned too much?
- Are these tasks too difficult or not interesting enough?
- Do I have a goal?
- Can I block out distractions while working?
If you are still struggling with repeated tasks or admin duties, try documenting your workflows. I have found it really helps to have a set method you do not have to think about. You can crack on and follow your own instructions without worrying whether you have forgotten a step.
For team work, the same idea scales into workflow process software. Process Street is a Compliance Operations Platform for documenting workflows as Docs, running recurring work as Ops, and using built-in AI to help teams move work forward without rebuilding the process every time.
If you do not have a business process management method already, start with Process Street and give repeated work a structure that protects your creative energy.
Then, whether you get everything done or not, relax in the evening. It is better to rest and recuperate ready for the following day than it is to work yourself into a frenzy by worrying like mad.
How do you encourage your creativity? Are you too harsh on yourself when it comes to work, or do you feel like a fraud during your successes?