5 Things to Restore Your Creativity

Welcome to day three thousand of March 2020.

The past two years have been the longest decade of our lives, leaving us all exhausted and run down. Even without a pandemic, we regularly find ourselves failing to meet our own plans and expectations. We set grand goals for ourselves, and then watch them fall by the wayside as the days get away from us.

If you’re anything like most people, you’re already three days behind by the end of the first week of the month. By the time the end of the year rolls around, you’re likely weeks or months behind where you wanted to be. I started this article over 10 months ago if that gives you any indication what 2021 has been like for me.

In any year, by the time you reach December, you’ve been through 334 or 335 days of being productive and measuring yourself based on not only your output, but your statistics, earnings, and feedback from other people. It’s a long stressful road for anyone, more so if you make your living out of being productive and creative.

Here’s the thing, you can only be as productive as your body and mind will let you be. If you are exhausted and burnt out, then it is okay not to be as productive as you think you should be. You cannot create when you are exhausted. You cannot be productive when you are burnt out.

You need to restore your energy, your resiliency, and your stamina to get your productivity back on track. This is crucial to your long-term productivity and success. You’re not going to last through the back-to-back-to-back marathons of life if you’re exhausted and rundown. You need to be resilient, rested, and productive — and the way to do this is to do things that restore your heart and soul.

Whether it is December or any other month, here are five things you can do to bring you back from exhaustion, restore your heart and soul, and get your productivity flowing again.

Have a Nap

Naps have a bad reputation, particularly in North America. They’re often associated with a lack of productivity, laziness, and sloth. There’s nothing more harmful to the image of productivity as a period of time spent doing nothing.

The problem is that when we’re run down and exhausted we’re not actually being productive, no matter what the image we’re projecting. We can spend all of our time in front of pages and pages of material, but if we don’t have the mental energy to deeply engage with our subject, then our creation is going to be shallow. Without the energy to create deeply, we end up doing work that isn’t worthy of our skills and abilities.

Even worse, people can tell when you’re phoning it in. I’ve done it multiple times, and it shows in my stats for those stories. It’s even worse when I’m working directly with people, because they can see just how badly I’m struggling. Sometimes a quick nap is the best way to restore your creative energy and to get you back on track.

Go For a Walk

When I started writing this article, I was working from home full-time. I’m now back to working out of an office where I have to be accountable for how I spend my time and energy. No matter where you work, going for a walk can help focus your mind and see things in a new way.

Often, when I’m working on a particularly perplexing problem, I deliberately shelve it and go for a walk. I choose to let it percolate in my brain and let the connections come naturally. By focusing on my walk and the things around me, I let my subconscious do the work and to make the connections I know are there, but are just out of reach. This has allowed me to reach a new conclusion or find a different approach countless times.

It doesn’t matter whether you head to your local park, or just take a walk through your office, this will help you restore your creativity and bring new energy to your work. It also helps you maintain a healthy lifestyle by getting you up and moving!

Take a Minute of Mindfulness

Stop what you’re doing.

Close your eyes.

Focus on your breathing.

Breathe in…2…3…4…

Breathe out…2…3…4…

Breathe in…2…3…4…

Breathe out…2…3…4…

Repeat as necessary, continuing to focus only on your breathing.

When your mind is settled and calm, you can go back to what you were doing.

Mindfulness isn’t for everyone, but it can certainly help restore your creativity by deliberately taking your mind off of what you’re working on. It forces you to slow down and pay attention how you are feeling and the world around you without being distracted by whatever shiny thing is preying upon your attention.

Put it Away and Do Something Else

Sometimes, the best thing you can do when you hit a creative wall is to just set it aside. Go read a book, watch a movie, work on some other project. Don’t force it, just sit and enjoy the world without any pressure.

One of the things that “hustle culture” has pushed on us is the feeling like we need to be doing something productive at every single moment of the day. Not only is this utterly wrong, it’s also a dangerous belief. Nobody can work at 100% productivity all day every day.

Sometimes what we need is to be deliberately non-productive. Put on a movie and relax. Listen to your favorite soundtrack while you browse social media, read a book, or just sit and exist for a few minutes. Go and grab a coffee with a friend — either virtually or in-person.

It doesn’t really matter what you do, just do something that isn’t related to whatever has you “stuck” at that particular moment. Release yourself from the expectation to always be productive and creative — allow yourself the grace to simply exist sometimes.

Getting creatively stuck can be an energy-sapper for so many reasons, so when you get stuck sometimes you just need to do something that restores your energy. Trust me, you’ll be better for it in the end.

Just Push Through

Sometimes, all you can do is just keep pushing until you’re done. When you’re working to a deadline, you can’t always wait for the perfect inspiration to strike. If you get stuck creatively, you have to keep pushing at it no matter how hard it feels.

This requires an extraordinary amount of self-discipline, and the willingness to push yourself beyond your comfort zone and into that place where your passion causes you pain. On some days, this is the only choice you have left.

Pushing through it can actually help reignite your creativity. In the same way that you used to be able to push start a car, pushing through your creative block can help restart your engine and get you firing on all cylinders again.

Put your head down and just keep plugging away at it. Take it one painful step at a time until you reach the point where you’re starting to roll under your own power again. Set yourself a goal and don’t let up until you’ve reached it — make sure it’s achievable and realistic though. Don’t aim for the summit in one go, set yourself interim goals and aim to meet those.

It can be tough when you’ve lost your creative spark, especially when your living relies on your creativity. These may not work for everyone, but hopefully you’ll find something that works for you — even if it isn’t in this article.

What about you? How do you restore your creativity when you’ve hit the wall?