A grad school mentee of mine recently asked me how I find inspiration even when I’m burned out. Here were some of my loose reflections.
If I’m burned out, a question I often ask myself is: what can I say no to?
Growing up, I was in an environment where I felt like I had to do a great job at anything I tried to do. But I discovered in college and grad school that when I don’t actually have the energy to give all of my projects 100%, rather than making myself miserable and exhausted trying to do everything well and only getting part of the way there, I’d rather pour myself into the one or two projects that really excite me, even if that means shoddy/mediocre work on the others.
I sometimes say that I can only do one or two things well. So if a project isn’t one of those top two things, I can be kinder to myself about not being able to give it as much energy and attention.
In that vein, it’s actually 100% okay to phone it in for an assignment, especially if you’re not connecting with it, and especially if it gives you time to sleep or time to feel exploratory about an assignment that you’re connecting with more.
For one of my favorite things I made in grad school, in order to give that project the time and exploration and energy it needed, I speed-wrote another assignment and did the bare minimum on a third assignment. I’d make that kind of trade again any day.
Another thing that helps me reconnect with my creative self, is letting go of the pressure for it to be good.
Being a little reductive here for a second, when I look back at my first year of grad school, I made four kinds of work:
- the awesome stuff — work I’m still genuinely proud of, that felt like me at my creative best
- the good stuff — work that I still like, that I wouldn’t consider my best, but that worked well / did what I wanted it to do
- the okay stuff — work that I can’t say I like much, but that I learned from
- the cringe stuff — work i got through because I had to, but I would honestly feel ashamed to share
If I’m being generous, I’d say something like 10% of stuff ended up awesome, 40% ended up good, 40% ended up okay, and 10% ended up cringe. (And it’s not like I started cringe and got to awesome; all four kinds of work were interspersed in what seems like an unpredictable way.)
All this to say—it’s normal to make stuff you’re not proud of, especially when you’re exhausted, uninspired, and out of time. It’s part of the creative process, even. After grad school, you’ll just be able to be choosier about showcasing what’s awesome/good and hiding what’s okay/cringe.
When I’m not feeling the spark, I often find that the goal of learning and exploring helps me let go of that pressure to be good, putting me in an easy and playful mood. Prompts like “What if I tried writing a song in X genre?” or “Maybe it doesn’t totally make sense here, but why not try Y rhythm?” or “How about I listen to 5 songs about Z topic, and let something from one of those songs be the seed?” (Love being inspired by other art.) I guess the thinking here is that even if I’m not feeling particularly inspired, I’m training myself with skills so that when the inspiration does strike, I’m ready for it.
Following my curiosity is a related core that helps me be creative. One of our professors once told us that even when she’s working on specific projects, she gives herself a little “jelly time” every day to let herself google weird things or go down rabbitholes or just plain play, without worrying about how useful those wanderings might be. I do something similar, and I find that the time both lets me feel present and human, and often leads to unexpected inspiration, whether for later that day or for months into the future. And while it’s difficult-to-impossible to control inspiration in any given moment, I think of these moments as cultivating inspiration over a lifetime—by following your curiosity, learning how to listen for your own spark, knowing when something feels deep and true.
Thank you to Charlotte for inspiring this post.