Battling Burnout: 5 Ways to Recover the Joy of Creating

I know it’s been a while. I haven’t written in several months. The reason is simple. I was burned out. Have you been there? 

A Labor of Love

I have a hard time understanding how it happened. I love doing what I do. I love writing, creating, you name it. Nearly everything I do professionally is more joy than job. Yes I know how blessed I am and how rare it is to live that way. I also really love writing this column. Digging into the creative side of ministry and sharing is life gifing for me. I really love it, so what’s the problem?

A Matter of Volume

Very simply stated it was getting to be too much. I’m a full time pastor. That responsibility alone has me writing at least 4,000 words a week. I preach about fifty messages a year just from my home church pulpit, If you do the math, that’s 200,000 words a year. The average non fiction book is about 50,000 words. This means I am writing the equivalent of four books worth of material every year. Of course that count doesn’t include all the special services, study curricula, my itinerant ministry presentations and all my other writing projects, including a pretty decent volume of these 700  to 1000 word articles. I was loving what I was doing, but it felt like I was writing all the time and the idea factory felt like it was running a little dry. 

Why All That Writing?  

Since COVID became a thing, rather than simply compiling an outline, I have been writing my sermons word for word, and publishing them as printed pieces for the faithful older members of my church who do not have access to the internet. I was blessed to find that not only were they reading the messages, but they were mailing them to friends and loved ones. Further one of my church member took to ministering at a local nursing home, adapting my written sermons and preaching them, plus giving copies of my sermon to people who may have been too ill to attend the regular service. I can’t give that up nor do I want to but something had to give. I decided to take a week off from writing this column, and it slipped to the back burner. 

Are You Dealing With Burnout

I’m not writing this column to whine. Rather I sense I am not alone. I think sooner or later all creatives will deal with burnout, even when we are doing what we love. So what can we do to battle burnout and get back to creating joyously? Here are five things I am going to do,   

1. Minimize Distractions

I’d be lying if I said I was writing every hour of every day. As my burnout started to rear its ugly head, it became really easy to drift. “I’m banging my head against a wall, let’s check my email, or hit up Facebook for a few minutes, after a while I am death scrolling reels. I can rationalize that this is a diversion to build my creativity, but that is rarely the case. Once you step into a distraction, it can be really hard to restart your creating. Find a way to set boundaries on your distractions. 

2. Stay Positive

There is a verse in the Bible that says, “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” (2 Timothy 2:23 ESV) How many times have you been derailed by a social media post or a news story that turns into a flame war. I was reading a great book called Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon and he gave these words of wisdom, “Quit fighting and make something!” It’s this simple, there is precious little I can do about most of the issues we face in our world, and most of the time even our most brilliant arguments are not going to change and entrenched mind. So instead of marching off to keyboard warrior “duty” maybe we should get back to doing what we do best—utilizing our gifts to the glory of God. 

3. Find a Diversion

A diversion is different from a distraction. There are times for all of us when the well runs temporarily dry. In those moments, I have another project going. Sometimes I might jump to a different writing project. If my writing “muscles” are worn down, I’ll usually have an illustration project or a hobby project to work on. In this way, I am still creating, doing something else that I enjoy and working toward another goal. This leaves me feeling energized and gives me a sense of accomplishment. The end result of this is I don’t feel burned out, but rather joyful. 

4. Rest

Stopping to rest can feel counterproductive, but it isn’t. There comes a time when even the hardiest worker needs to stop. Even the Lord took a break and if the all powerful God took time to rest, how prideful do you have to be to think you can’t? Sometimes we try to power through and it looks like it. More than once I have tried to do this and woke up the next day wondering, “What on earth is that?” I end up having to redo what I tried to push, and all that I accomplished was losing sleep. I found out the hard way, it you don’t rest your body, sooner or later it will make you rest. Give yourself a break.

5. Ask Yourself “Whose Deadline Is This?” 

Part of the reason I burned out on this column was because I was pushing myself to come up with two columns a week. If this was all I was doing this would not be an issue, but this is a project I work in on the side, in between everything else. My deadline was unrealistic. I set it myself but I still pushed myself to hit it. It wasn’t Patheos’ deadline and it sure wasn’t God’s. So from now on, I plan to go for quality over quantity. In those projects where you set the deadline, give yourself a break.

Bottom Line.

I have a hard deadline. Every week by Sunday Morning, I need to be ready to bring people a message from God’s Word. That is a huge responsibility and an amazing privilege. So that comes first (at least where my work life is concerned). I have people who book me to come into their venues to speak—another hard deadline. I have family responsibilities and some of those are hard deadlines too. So I’ve made a conscious decision. I will take on other projects, especially to help others out, but I’m not taking anything else with a hard deadline.  

If you are dealing with burnout, I’ll leave you with another quote from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. “Neil Young sang, ‘It’s better to burn out than to fade away.’ I say it’s better to burn slow and see your grandkids.” God may want you to be “on fire” for Him, but He doesn’t need you burned out. His joy is your strength. Create with joy.