Are you feeling creatively drained, staring at a blank screen, willing ideas to come, wondering what happened to your well of creativity? You're not alone. Join your host Claire Bridges as she tackles the pervasive issue of burnout that affects countless creative professionals. With personal insights and expert research, we're exploring the crippling effects of burnout on creativity and more importantly, how to manage and overcome them. Tune in to discover practical strategies for taking stock, replenishing your energy, regaining your confidence, and reconnecting to your creativity. Listen now to reclaim your creative spark. 

Here are the highlights:

• The different ways that burnout can show up in people
• Tools and practices for identifying and managing burnout
• Creating a wellness action plan
• Why it's important to acknowledge and respect your own creative process
• How to talk about burnout yourself, and with others 
• Recovering from burnout and ways to re-engage with your inner creative 

About Claire Bridges:

Claire Bridges is Chief Spark and Founder of leading creative training consultancy Now Go Create, whose philosophy is that everyone can be creative.

Claire worked as a PR agency Managing Director and Creative Director working with global brands including Starbucks, Kellogg’s, Unilever, P&G and Danone in her previous PR career. Upskilling individuals, teams and organisations with practical creativity tools is Claire’s mission. 

She’s one of only 250 people globally to hold an MSc in Creativity, Leadership & Innovation, and authored an Amazon best-selling creative handbook In Your Creative Element based on her academic studies.

Claire and her hand-picked team of experts have worked on thousands of creative projects and trained over 40,000 people around the world since starting Now Go Create in 2011.

Connect with Claire:

Website: https://nowgocreate.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowgocreate/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NowGoCreate

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/claire-bridges-b6205b14

Useful links:

https://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/

https://www.marketingweek.com/2025-marketing-pay-revealed/

https://womeninpr.org.uk/what-we-do/burnout/

CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) can be contacted on 0800 585858 or via the CALM website https://www.thecalmzone.net/

Read: Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Produced by winteraudio.co.uk

Hello and welcome to Now Go Create, the podcast that helps you bring more creativity, inspiration and innovation into your work and life.

I'm Claire Bridges and today we're tackling something that's been creeping into the lives of so many creative burnout.

Have you ever felt completely drained staring at your diary, feeling overwhelmed or unable to come up with ideas?

Staring at the blank screen or page, thinking, I used to love doing this?

What happened?

You're not alone.

One of the reasons I decided to speak on this topic today is because I'm noticing so many examples of burnout in my day to day work.

I've had four conversations in the past few weeks alone about burnout with people that I'm either coaching or working with on my creative training courses.

It's incredibly widespread, absolutely lethal and totally numbing to creative thought.

As prevalent as it is, burnout is often misunderstood, it's stigmatised and it's really costly, both to employees health and well being and of course to employers productivity.

According to Mental Health uk, which has issued a report on burnout this year, levels of overall pressure and stress remain high, with 91% of UK adults reporting that they experienced high or extreme levels of pressure or stress in the past year.

The Women in PR survey data shows that 66% of women working in the PR industry have considered quitting their roles due to burnout.

That is a huge number of creative professionals who are struggling and I know from personal experience that when burnout hits, it doesn't just affect your job, it impacts your confidence, your relationships and even your sense of self.

I've experienced mental health challenges, including burnout, at different points in my career and I know just how debilitating it can be and just how detrimental it is to creativity.

So today we're going to talk about what is burnout and why does it hit creative people so hard?

What does the research say about helping us to get out of it and how can we replenish our creative energy and get back to loving our work?

I've got real world insights, personal experience, expert research and practical tools that you can use today.

And by the way, all the tools, studies and resources I'm going to mention in this episode are linked in the show notes, so don't worry about having to take anything down.

So grab a coffee or perhaps a nice calming chamomile tea Take a deep breath and let's dive in.

So what is burnout and why does it hit creatives so hard?

The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon, and it shows up in three ways.

The first is emotional exhaustion, feeling completely drained.

The second is cynicism and detachment.

You can stop caring or even start resenting your work.

And the third is a sense of ineffectiveness, like nothing that you do is good enough.

Marketing Week's research backs this up.

47% of marketers say they feel detached from their work, and 40% say they feel ineffective.

And if you work in a creative field, marketing, pr, design, copywriting, innovation, burnout isn't just exhausting, it's crippling.

Scott Birkin, renowned author and speaker, says burnout is pushing your creative energy beyond recovery.

He says, like a well of water, creative energy replenishes itself slowly over time.

But if you keep drawing from it without refilling it, one day it will run dry.

I think it's very hard to hide how you're feeling when you're expected, as I was back in my PR agency life, to be a cheerleader for your team, to be the one who picks everyone up after a lost pitch, to be constantly having to come up with ideas, and for me, feeling detached, cynical, and really not giving a toss about the client brief was clearly not conducive to creativity.

I just felt creatively anesthetized, just numb.

Worryingly, it also seems that despite much better awareness of mental health issues, 60% of the women in PR respondents who currently feel stressed, anxious or burnt out said they find it difficult to talk about feeling stressed, anxious or burnt out in the workplace.

Of those who have experienced burnout at work in the last 12 months, only 11% say they have been completely supported.

Its impact just cannot be diminished.

And when you're in it, it can feel really hard to imagine a time in the future when you're not burnt out.

If creativity is a part of your role, then you already probably know that creativity requires mental space.

It requires curiosity and thrives on playfulness.

But burnout erodes all of these.

If you're feeling stuck, it's not that you've lost your creativity.

Your creative well is just empty.

And I wanted to acknowledge something else here, and that is that burnout doesn't look the same for everyone.

For neurodivergent individuals, those with adhd, autism, and other cognitive differences, burnout can occur more frequently, it can last longer, and it can feel different.

So it's really important that we don't expect one size fits all solutions, but there are things that we can do and I'm going to come on to talk about those.

I did just want to touch on burnout and depression.

I have suffered with both over my past 20, 30 years working career and whilst they can look similar, they are distinct conditions with different causes, symptoms and treatments.

And I just wanted to touch on this here.

Burnout is situational.

It's caused often by chronic stress, overwork, prolonged emotional strain, and it's usually in a work or caregiving setting.

Depression can have multiple causes, biological, genetic, psychological, environmental, and it's not always linked to work and stress.

In my own case, to give you an example, in agency life, I was working very long hours under a lot of stress without adequate rest.

I was feeling overwhelmed and understaffed with the cycle of pitches and client work which was just unrelenting and I experienced burnout.

My creativity was completely squashed.

I eventually took a three month break and I recovered.

And I do appreciate that I'm privileged and was financially stable enough to be able to do that.

I did also have the support of my employer who supported me taking some time off.

But just to contrast that, during my divorce I was anxious, tearful, exhausted.

Even after taking time off, the symptoms persisted until I had therapy, medication and I made a big life change in that I did get divorced.

So burnout is usually job related.

If you can step away from the work, reduce the stress, you can start to recover.

Depression usually affects every part of your life and you'll need professional help if you're feeling persistently low or helpless.

And please do seek help if this resonates with you.

Talk to your doctor, consider all your options as appropriate and lean into your support network.

So of course I'm not a mental health expert, but I can share what helped me working in a creative environment and what the research and reading suggest.

So let's move on to some practical strategies.

Burnout shows up physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually and as I've said, it can look different for everyone.

Mental Health UK has some really useful guidance and loads of resources which I'll drop into the show notes at the end.

And here are some of the practical tools that they talk about.

The first one is about structuring your day and this is about creating boundaries around your working hours.

If you work from home, try to have a dedicated space and a clear start and finish to the day.

If you don't have full control of your own schedule, then micro boundaries, like building in a 10 minute pause between meetings can help if you're self employed or freelance.

Of course you're not immune to burnout, so you could try setting artificial office hours, finding a support pod or building in structured breaks to try to avoid burnout.

The second piece of advice from Mental Health UK is about taking breaks and they suggest that you take five minutes every hour to reset.

Mindfulness, breathing or just stepping outside can make a huge difference.

I use the Daily Calm app a few times a week to really actively try to reset my nervous system, to try to engage my parasympathetic nervous system and just to take some time out if I'm feeling that kind of tired and wired.

I know I've got work to do, but I'm really not feeling in a particularly resourceful state and I do find that really helpful.

The third thing is to try to set boundaries.

So we talked about creating boundaries around your working hours.

So define your working hours and stick to them.

If you're maybe in a junior role and you feel unable to say no, which is part of boundary setting, perhaps you could try some phrases like I'm currently at capacity, can we review a few of my priorities together?

I think the other thing about setting boundaries is also if you are line managing other people and they start to present to you with challenges like this, you do also need to be able to have a boundary of where your roles and responsibilities as a line manager start and stop.

And I'm going to talk a bit more about that.

How you work, if somebody approaches you and you think they're burnt out, try to stay connected.

I work from home a lot and it can be quite isolating.

So we know that booking regular check ins with your colleagues, whether it's a face to face coffee, a zoom coffee, just talking, laughing, connecting, it does make a big difference.

Try to manage your time.

Now I know that's often easier said than done, particularly if you're not completely in control of your schedule.

There is this process called the four Ds which you can think about, which is what can you ditch?

So what can you actually get rid of from your to do list?

What I tend to find is that over a period of time, if there are certain things that I don't action within a 2, 3, 4 week period that are on my to do list.

I'm realizing that I'm naturally deprioritizing them and sometimes they will just come off.

But is there a way you can actively do that?

What can you defer?

So what could you either put off or try to negotiate a deadline that's a bit further away.

What can you delegate?

Is that possible for you?

Is there any way to delegate?

And I mean up as well as down.

And of course then there's do.

Recently I helped someone I was working with create a wellness action plan for herself.

And that meant that when we were looking at managing her time over a whole period, which was the next 3, 6, 9, 12 months, it's going to be very, very busy for her.

And so we looked at identifying some of the pressure points there and building in some of her things that give her that downtime, that rest, that relaxation that she likes to do.

So it's really also identifying over the, over a period of time not just what it looks like this week, but what does it look like the following week, the week after and so on.

When I was really burnt out, I would, on a Monday morning I didn't really get the scary Sundays like people talk about, but on a Monday I would look at my diary and I would just pan panic looking at my diary, trying to find spaces where I could actually get the work done, get the prep done, get the delivery work done, but also just try to carve out a bit of time for myself.

And what I got a lot better at was carving out that time for myself, just saying what I'm going to plan to do something.

So for me, my go to if I'm feeling antsy, tired, physically, mentally, emotionally is to go and do yoga.

And I don't mean the sort of Ashtanga, throwing yourself around, you know, getting hot and sweaty that works for some people it is to lie down in the, in a hot yoga studio and hold poses and not do very much for an hour.

Now again, I know that's not available to everyone, but the thing with yoga that I love is that it isn't a pretty democratic thing that you can do.

Loads of free resources online for yoga if that's your thing.

It is my thing, but that's definitely my go to and I try to plan some of that in.

So that moves us on to prioritising your self care and you know, thinking about trying to make sure that you have good sleep hygiene.

We all know, you know, the things we should and shouldn't do to get a good night's sleep.

Again, I sometimes use the Calm app.

There's a whole load of sleep meditations on the Calm app that I really like and try to eat well, try to put good nutrition into your body and try to move.

I personally avoid alcohol when I'm feeling depleted.

It might feel good short term, but it really helps in the long term.

And I find the older I get, the less I can tolerate it.

There's a really good tool on Mental Health UK website which I thought was great, which is called the stress bucket.

And it's just a really simple exercise that will take you 5, 10 minutes to do max.

And the idea is that you imagine your stress capacity as a bucket and you think about what is filling it and what's helping you to empty it.

And it's a really simple, but a powerful visual way to explore what's going on for you.

And I thought I had some good prompts and some good questions.

I mentioned earlier about working with other people and I think this is where it gets really tricky.

Having had both burnout and depression in an office environment, in an office setting.

I think, as we said, as I've said, it shows up differently for everybody.

For me, it definitely meant that I became quite withdrawn and I really didn't want to talk to anybody about how I was, how I was feeling.

I think there's quite a lot of shame around burnout that you should be able to cope with your workload.

You know, you're being paid to work, you've got a job, you've got people to lead, that you should be able to cope with it.

I think things have changed quite a lot.

It's been, you know, over a decade since I was in a working environment and I certainly see some changes, but I do think that there's.

It's still quite a difficult thing to navigate.

It might be easier said than done, but if you can, if you are personally struggling, think about how you might communicate with your manager or your team or a trusted friend or colleague.

Perhaps using something like the Stress bucket could actually open up the conversation.

Talking about some of the resources there.

I think if you are a manager or a leader, it is important to normalise conversations about burnout and thinking about checking in regularly with people about where they're at and not just about the deadlines.

And one of the really surprising things that I see time and time again are these stats about how workers don't use all of their annual leave.

So HR magazine reported that last year, 65% of UK workers didn't use all their annual leaves.

That is your paid rest.

Take that time if it is being offered to you, if that's the one thing you do today, after this podcast, take a look at your diary, take a look at what you have, what holiday you have to take and ring fence that time.

The same thing goes if you work for yourself.

And I've just gone through it and put in all the things like the school holidays, half terms, bank holidays, all of those things.

And actually then when you look at that, and then if you're a working parent, you've got the school holidays, you can actually see where you've got gaps to do fun things and where you might want to take time off and then also where you've just.

Where you can do your more perhaps intense or deep work and where you can deliver work.

So that for me is just a visual.

It sounds really obvious, but it's a nice big, colorful wall chart that I've got there and I can see at a glance where I might have these stress points and try to figure out how to manage those.

I think the other thing is that burnout is not just about individuals and as leaders.

If you're leading, if you're a creative leader or if you're leading a team of any kind, then it might be worth looking at some of the systems that are in place.

The culture of hustle, you know, this, this idea, this presenteeism that we have to be at our desks, overworking, perhaps lack of inclusion, all of these things contribute to people's stress levels.

And changing those can help everybody.

So I want to talk about rebuilding your creative energy.

And when you're ready to recover your creative spark, it can be helpful to start by understanding your own creative process, if you don't already know.

So one of the exercises I like to do with people is to ask them is when are you at your creative best?

Have a think about that.

Are you alone?

Are you with other people?

Is it in the morning?

Is it in the afternoon?

Is it in the evening?

You're a night owl.

What gets you into flow?

What gets you into those times where you can realise that you really just have been so absorbed and enjoying what you're doing that time has passed?

So if creativity is a social process for you, then then build in more collaboration.

If you're more introverted and that's your preference, then protect your alone time.

Zoom calls can be draining at the best of time.

You know, what's your ideal rhythm?

I work with some people who will say to me, oh, can we just have a regular call now?

I really don't want to be on zoom.

I don't want to be on camera.

And I totally get it.

It is distracting.

And if you're not feeling physically, mentally, emotionally your best.

Maybe you just don't want to be on a zoom call and I totally get that.

But just try to protect your space, whatever that space is for you.

I really love the free Adobe Creative Types assessment that can help you understand your creative preferences and those of your team.

And it's a slight sort of add on to what we're talking about here today.

But I do think this sense of understanding yourself, understanding your motivations and those of your team can be really, really helpful in figuring out how you all work really well as a high performing creative team.

Because of course we all have preferences in relation to creativity just like we do anything else.

If you're looking for a bit of a deeper reset, then I've talked about Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way before and I will continue to refer to it probably on every podcast, wherever it comes up, because it has some great tools in there.

It's called the Artist's Way, but it's really for anybody who wants to reconnect or connect with your creativity.

So she has the morning pages, which is her complete stream of consciousness morning exercise that you do every day to just have a mental declutter.

And the other thing she suggests if you want to get deeper into it, which she says can seem a bit bonkers to other people.

But it's this idea of artist dates where you have dates, you set a date with yourself and you do something that fires you up creatively, emotionally, spiritually.

It's a great book.

I'll drop the link into the notes.

Here are a few other things that have helped me over the years.

So I talked about my diary earlier and saying no to anything non essential.

So that might mean when I'm feeling stressed or tired or I notice some of these warning signs is that there'll be no unpaid advice, no free talks, no doing anything that depletes me, but that is not helping me pay the bills.

And that's just being really frank and honest.

Sometimes you just got to protect your time for what you can literally afford to do.

I just mentioned journaling.

Journaling is really good for processing creative blocks.

I think of it just as a mental declutter and even just a few lines a day, whatever you can do, it makes you, it releases somehow that sort of pressure to have to have everything that you every idea that you have has to be a great idea or a useful idea or has some purpose.

It's just really about getting something out on paper and I found that helpful.

The other thing is talking to someone who gets it.

So my friend Kerry is also a facilitator and she is my work sounding board as well as my dog walking bestie.

And we know that we can have a debrief about our day or our work, which let's face it, it doesn't always go how you want it to go.

So we have a lot of fun actually and a lot of release and just talking about the things that have gone right, but also the things that maybe haven't gone so well in our working experiences and just sharing those somehow makes us feel a bit better.

Self Compassion for me means naps and I have no shame in being nap positive.

I will nap anytime and sometimes as say when I'm doing that calm app that will send me to sleep for a little while and that's fine.

The other thing is just about reinforcing the positive and celebrating small wins where you can get them.

And one of the things I have is positive client feedback in a place where I can see it, I can read it, and I can refer to it on days when I'm just feeling like everything's a bit crappy and I am incredibly low energy and low motivation.

Now clearly that is not burnout, but it can be stressful when things don't go well.

So I try to find ways to pick myself up from that stress or to not let the stress erode me.

So let's recap what I've covered today.

Burnout is real.

It's complex.

There's no one size fits all solution, but it is recoverable.

I've talked about how burnout affects your creativity, how to differentiate it from depression, and shared some practical strategies including mindfulness and time management.

Some ways that we can start to try and get our creative spark back.

I wanted to finish with this quote that I found, which is from the book the Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.

If you're thinking I can get by with less, you're right.

You can get by dragging your increasingly rest deprived brain and body through your life.

Suppose you send your 10 year old child away to camp and you learn that they aren't feeding her adequately because they're sure she can get by on less.

Suppose you leave your dog with a pet sitter and learn they're having your dog sleep outside in the cold because he can get by in that weather.

Suppose your best friend starts wearing a tight lace corset everywhere so she physically can't take a full breath and is constantly slightly oxygen deprived, gasping as she climbs a single flight of stairs, but she can get by with that much oxygen.

Your child, your dog, and your friend can all get by with less than optimal levels of every basic bodily need.

So can you.

But the way you react to your hungry child, your shivering dog, and your gasping friend is how we feel about you getting by with too little rest.

It's not just that we believe you deserve more, it's that we know you're suffering and we want to bring you relief.

Creativity thrives in balance, and you cannot push forever without refilling your well, all the links to the resources I've mentioned are in the Show Notes.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

Stay well and I hope to see you next time.

As ever, if you're enjoying the podcast, please do take a moment to rate and review it.

It really does help others to find the episodes.

And as I mentioned, I'll put all the resources into the Show Notes.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Now Go Create.

I hope you enjoyed the conversation on how to upskill and unleash your creativity at work.

And if you liked the episode, please be sure to subscribe to our show and follow us on social media at Now Go Create.

Now Go Create.