How to Recover From Burnout
Burnout is a state of being I am all too familiar with, and you may be familiar with it too. You spend days, weeks, months working on a project, or multiple projects only to hit a wall, one you can’t see a way around or over. Some of us try to “power through” that wall, staying up all night, working for hours-long stretches that end with us realizing we haven’t gotten up to eat or take a break in far too long. But going through the wall isn’t really a viable option when it comes to writer burnout; often that attempt to just “get through it” results in extreme mental and physical stress and a lower quality of work that has to be fixed later anyway. Once, when I was a teenager, I wrote for hours straight, writing thousands of words in a massive burst. When I was finally finished, I passed out and couldn’t bring myself to write a word for the following two days; I had burned myself out in one afternoon. Here, I’d like to offer some possible methods for recovering from burnout.
Switching Tracks
Sometimes it can be helpful, in the event of burnout, to try something new. When we focus for so long on one project or aspect of a project, it can overtax our minds and bodies to the point of serious burnout. At that point, it may be helpful to switch tracks and focus on something else. Write in a different form; if you’ve been writing prose, try poetry. If you’ve been focused on fiction, try your hand at memoir instead. If you’ve been doing nothing but drafting and generating new content, maybe it could help to pull out an old piece and revise it instead. By working on something different from what you’ve been focusing on, you cause your brain to switch into a different mode of thought and analysis, which may relieve some of the burnout you’ve been feeling.
Take Care of Your Body
Whenever I feel myself getting upset or extra-sensitive to little things, I try to pause and ask myself if my feelings are appropriate or if, maybe, I’m just hungry or thirsty. It sounds infantilizing but sometimes you really are baby, which means you need to take care of your body the same way you take care of your mind. Eat something with protein, take a drink of water, go for a walk. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something meant solely to heal the physical strain burnout can put on your body. Personally, I love to put my headphones on, turn on some music or a familiar podcast, and go for a long walk in the park. I remind myself to roll my shoulders back, open up my chest, and focus on my breathing. I find that doing so helps bring my mind back to center and cleanses my brain of the stress I’ve put it through.
Take a Damn Nap
Another tip for taking care of the child that is your human body: take a damn nap. Sometimes all we need is a little sleep to clear our heads. I know it can be appealing to burn the candle at both ends and ignore the siren song of our bed, but sleep deprivation can cause serious physical and mental problems. Unfortunately, there is a habit among creatives to romanticize sleepless nights spent in devotion to our craft. I know I’ve certainly spent more than a few nights writing into the wee hours of the morning, then crashing by the time the sun rose on my work. I can tell you that there was never any discernible uptick in the quality of the work. So, put the work away for the night and go get some sleep.
Take a Break from the Work
I’ve been advocating for taking small breaks throughout this post, but now I want to argue for the case of taking a longer, more substantial break. And, if you’re anything like me, you’re tensing up just at the implication of not working for an extended period of time. But hear me out. There’s a common refrain among writers that, when you’ve finished a piece, it is best to put it aside and not work on it for as long as possible, to give yourself the space to come back to the piece with objectivity. What if doing this, but with your writing as a whole, allows you to come back to your practice with an amount of distance that might make it possible for you to adjust your writing practice? Maybe, given a little time and space, you might come to realize that there are aspects of your writing routine that are consistently contributing to times of burnout. Then, after spending some time recovering and refilling your well of creativity, you can go forward armed against times of burnout in the future.
