How to Overcome a Creative Rut: 5 Helpful Tips

Have you ever felt stuck as a creative? Have you experienced running out of ideas when you needed them badly?

A creative rut is a passing experience of running out of creative ideas. This is also commonly referred to as creative block and is often confused with burnout or exhaustion. However, the experience can vary from one person to another and the causes are also individual. While there is no absolute cure, there are several self-remedies you can use to better identify, name, and deal with the problem.

1. Burnout or uninspired

Although either of these can ultimately lead to a terrible case of creative rut, it’s pretty important to identify the root of the problem. Being burned out comes with a feeling of exhaustion, which can be either physical or psychological. Burnout often occurs when you’ve completed back-to-back projects or seemingly endless repetitions of similar tasks.

Being uninspired doesn’t necessarily mean being burnt out. In fact, even a well-rested person can sometimes feel uninspired. The lack of inspiration may seem very trivial to most, but we all know that the best projects that end up meaningful to us and our audience are those that start with strong sources of inspiration.

Obviously, it would be better to manage burnout by taking time to rest and relax. This can mean either absolute physical rest and sleep, or activities that help you relieve some stress by taking your mind off your usual routines. Of course, being uninspired can only be cured by seeking inspiration. It’s important to understand the cycles of your psychology, and most of the time our creativity is governed by an on and off cycle where we begin to absorb inspiration only to later transform it into something tangible.

2. Pressure or (reverse) procrastination?

The two concepts may seem completely different and independent. However, if you’ve taken the time to ask yourself if you’re in a hurry, this might clear things up for you. Sometimes working under so much pressure can overload our minds so much that it would be harder to think clearly about concepts and plan the steps to implement them. When we are under a lot of pressure, we can panic, which can lead to some physical manifestations that end up making us even more distracting. Dealing with pressure often requires planning specific steps and breaking down the creative process into smaller tasks so you can tackle each one in turn.

Procrastination is putting off a specific task until the very last minute before the deadline. When a person has many distractions from the task, it is very easy to find easier or more interesting things instead of working on them right away. However, reverse procrastination is the complete opposite. This is the act of working (or at least trying to) in a hurry, completing all your tasks as early as possible to free up your schedule for rest or other projects. While reverse procrastination can be a great way to get things done and take control of your time, there are times when things cannot be forced and it is necessary to forgive yourself for giving yourself a little time to rest and relax. Procrastinating backwards means you have some time to spare, and it might be more productive to use that time to recover first.

3. Always listen to your body

When you’re tired, your body always shows signs that it needs some rest. These signs can be as trivial as muscle aches, headaches, or even stopping at work. When you’re extremely passionate with ideas, it can actually override body fatigue to push you for a few more tasks. However, when the body can’t take it anymore, it will start asking for a break. Of course, these signs will be sources of distraction in one way or another. Your headache or muscle aches could ruin your concentration, or worse, fatigue can completely prevent you from doing any physical work. It’s always better to listen to these calls from your body as early as possible because if you ignore them, the calls for quiet will get much louder until you have absolutely no choice. Resting early and regularly gives you the freedom to set the time. However, when your body is pushed to its limits, you may have to face problems that you cannot easily recover from, which will definitely take longer.

4. Oversaturation kills creativity

When tasks become repetitive and routine, they often help you be more consistent in the quality and efficiency of your work. However, this can reach a point where you get tired of doing the same thing over and over again and end up bored. This point of boredom is a signal from your brain to mix things up a bit and try new things. The problem with a repetitive routine is that it can give negative feedback on your initiative for new ideas and later cause your creativity to flag. It’s important to look for new ideas and to challenge yourself from time to time. While the challenges may be intimidating, the ability to overcome them will inspire you to push your limits further and conquer even more challenges that require new creative solutions.

5. Go back to your main reasons

If you’re passionate enough to create, whether it’s a photographer, filmmaker, designer, content creator, or anything in between, you probably have a deep-rooted reason for it. This means that your passion for what you do is not a simple superficial reason like money or fame, but your love of creating and your love of the creative process. It’s important to have such a deep love for what you do, especially when things get challenging because superficial reasons almost always let us down. These reasons depend entirely on the rewards of the outcome and not the success of the process itself. If you do what you do because you love it and enjoy doing it, rather than seeing the secondary results, you will go back and keep going and trying no matter how much money the project made or how many people appreciated it.

Experiencing a creative rut is part of the game of being an artist. Your creativity comes from the fact that you are a human being who is naturally prone to exhaustion and emotions, making it quite natural to be affected by them. It is important to identify the pieces of this vague puzzle in order to begin identifying and labeling its roots so you have a clear approach to solving it.