How to Build a Creative Life After Burnout (Without Burning Out Again)
In late September, I picked up The Artist’s Way—mostly because half the internet seemed to be doing it. I’d never really thought of myself as a “real creative.” Sure, I had creative tendencies. I worked in a creative field.
Julia Cameron has a term for people like me: Shadow Artists in Shadow Jobs. Shadow artists orbit creativity without making their own art. We’re the ones who work adjacent to what we really want to do, close enough to feel the pull but not close enough to call ourselves artists.
As I started bringing my creativity out of the shadows, I realized something crucial: I couldn’t rebuild my creative life using the same all-or-nothing thinking that burned me out in the first place.
As I step into my creativity, here are three tools helping me build a creative life I don’t need to recover from.
Tool One: The “Good Enough” Rule
When I was younger, I did years of gymnastics. When you were sore or stuck on a movement, you didn’t stop and walk away—you approached it from a different angle. I’d try different drills, experiment with techniques, figure out what I was asking my body to do. If I stopped and walked away, I’d never progress.
I haven’t been a gymnast in years. I haven’t stretched that muscle, so I did what I had never done before when creative burnout hit… I stopped. No creating. No doing. Just sitting in peace.
It was wrong.
I felt itchy, uncomfortable. I wasn’t progressing—I was stalling.
My younger self would’ve known better. She would’ve asked: What different angle can I try? What new drill might help?
The cure for burnout isn’t doing nothing. It’s creating differently.
I’m filming long-form and short-form content. I’m writing essays, gardening, watercoloring, experimenting. I’m learning new skills, stretching old ones. The goal isn’t perfection or monetization—it’s “no-outcome” creative time.
As a recovering perfectionist, this is hard. Gymnastics taught me that perfection kept me safe—tuck that chin so you don’t hurt your neck, spin faster at the peak for better rotation. Perfectionism made me an A+ student: tweaking, editing, refining, learning teachers’ preferences until I hit that perfect grade.
But now? Perfectionism stifles me. It’s like throwing a jar over the match of my creativity and watching it burn out as the oxygen leaves.
My creativity needs oxygen.
I’m learning the 80% rule. I don’t need to be 100% happy with something to share it. I just need to be 80% there. Adjusting every comma and pixel will keep me from moving forward. You learn more from doing than from perfecting and waiting.
The Practice:
Set aside weekly “no-outcome” creative time. Think of it like your Artist’s Way date—something playful, something that doesn’t have to produce anything.
Your only rules:
Pick something you’re not great at (or something brand new)
Set a time limit (30-90 minutes so you can’t overwork it)
The goal is 80% satisfaction, not perfection—when you feel the urge to keep tweaking, stop there
This teaches your brain that creating doesn’t have to equal producing. That good enough is actually good enough.
Tool Two: The Capacity Check-In
My default answer was always “yes.” Yes, I can take that on. Yes, I can make that deadline. Yes, I can squeeze in one more thing. I wore my packed schedule like a badge of honor—proof that I was capable, in-demand, needed.
I loved it at first until I was wrung dry by my own doing.
Suddenly, I was overdoing it—for others, for myself, for the validation of a packed schedule that proved I was important. It made me feel safe. It made me feel useful. It made my job feel secure.
And then, in a 15-minute phone call, someone said, “we are laying you off.”
Someone swiped their arm across my table of proof. All that hustle, yes-saying, and packed calendars crashed to the ground. I thought it was solid. I was wrong.
In hindsight, this was probably the start of my burnout. I’d been carrying grief and perfectionism like heavy luggage. And had I not been laid off, I suspect I would have just kept going, trying my best, waiting for “someday” instead of choosing today.
Now I’m practicing the art of listening. Listening to my body. Listening to my energy. Distinguishing between “I don’t want to” (resistance) and “I genuinely can’t” (depletion).
It’s a balance, learning my capacity levels. But it’s teaching me to be intentional with my time and my life.
I still get a dopamine hit from a packed calendar—it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. But now I build spaciousness before I need it, not after I collapse. No more unnecessary meetings that could’ve been emails. No more saying yes just to feel needed.
The Practice:
Daily Capacity Check-In (2 minutes, morning or midday):
Energy level: On a scale of 1-10, where am I today?
The honest question: For each commitment today, ask “Do I have capacity for this, or just time?”
The adjustment: If you’re below a 6, identify one thing you can move, delegate, or simplify
Weekly Spaciousness Audit (10 minutes, Sunday or Monday):
Look at your week ahead
Add buffer blocks between commitments (even 15-30 minutes)
Time-block for stillness: I literally schedule “tea time,” “book time,” “private writing time,” and hobby blocks in my calendar. If it’s not blocked, it won’t happen. These aren’t optional—they’re appointments with myself.
Schedule at least one “nothing” block—unstructured time that exists only for you to breathe, think, or do whatever emerges
Ask: “If I had to cancel one thing this week, what would it be?” (That’s your signal for what’s draining you most)
The goal isn’t an empty calendar. It’s a calendar that honors both your commitments and your capacity. Structure can create spaciousness when you’re intentional about what you’re structuring in.
Tool Three: Micro-Seasons for Creative Work
For years, I believed in the myth of endless productivity. Growth should be constant. Output should be steady. Every quarter should be better than the last. The trajectory was always supposed to be up and to the right.
I treated my creativity like a factory, not a garden.
Then I burned out. And in the quiet that followed, I started noticing something: Nature doesn’t work this way. The trees outside my window weren’t apologizing for going dormant. The garden wasn’t ashamed of its fallow months.
Nature follows a rhythm: Dormancy. Bloom. Harvest. Decay. And it trusts—without question—that it will bloom again.
Winter doesn’t apologize for being quiet, for being still. We know that in winter, things are resting. Gathering. Slowing down beneath the surface.
Spring doesn’t apologize for being messy—with its mud and its rain. We know that something is about to bloom.
Summer doesn’t apologize for burning bright. It luxuriates in its fullness.
Fall doesn’t apologize as it lets go. It trusts that something new is coming.
Nature doesn’t rush to bloom. So why do we? The earth is never in a constant season of output—and yet, it’s always becoming.
The Practice:
Monthly or Seasonal “Garden Walks”
Just as a gardener walks through their garden to evaluate what’s happening, you’ll do the same check-in with your creative life. Set aside 20-30 minutes at the end of each month (or season) to ask:
What’s thriving?
(What projects, practices, or rhythms are feeling alive and energizing right now?)
What needs more tending?
(What’s struggling for attention or resources? What have you been neglecting?)
What can be pruned back?
(What commitments, projects, or habits are taking up space but no longer serving you?)
Bonus question: What season am I in right now?
Winter (Dormancy): Rest, reflect, gather energy
Spring (Planting): Experiment, try new things, make a mess
Summer (Bloom): Execute, share, be visible, burn bright
Fall (Harvest): Complete projects, celebrate what worked, let go of what didn’t
Give yourself permission to be in whatever season you’re actually in—not the season you think you “should” be in.
Learning to treat my creativity like a garden—honoring seasons, allowing fallow periods, trusting the bloom will come—has been transformative. But it’s also revealed something deeper about what I’m actually rebuilding.
The Bigger Shift: Rebuilding Creative Identity Without Productivity
My previous advertising job absolutely crushed my relationship with output. When every 15 minutes had to be accounted for and 80% of my time needed to be billable, there was no room for play, expansion, or observation. The things that actually make you creative.
I still love structure, and I still time-block my days. But now I’m blocking time for space itself—not for producing. I’m not counting videos made or words written. I’m creating conditions for creativity to exist, whether or not it “produces” anything.
This is the long game—the marathon.
I’ve learned that creative burnout often comes from equating worth with output. After my layoff, I started measuring differently—by presence, not performance. Showing up for my day, my walk, my page—not just my to-do list.
Now I find myself asking:
Am I present in this moment?
Am I content in this moment?
Am I allowing creative expression as part of my natural rhythm?
Your answers will be different than mine. And that’s precisely the point.
