Give it time: Avoiding (and healing) burnout

Lessons I've learned from the handy men working on our house.

The past few months we’ve had some work done to our house.
We hired a man to demolish our old loo to install a new one. He reckoned he needed about four days for the whole job, tiling included. But on the second day he wasn’t able to hang our new toilet on the wall, and told us he needed a full day extra. “Of course it won’t cost you extra, you hired me to do the job, so I’ll do the job”, he said.

That week I learned how the business of installing toilets and tiling walls worked. I felt envious towards our handy man. Wouldn’t this be something for me, working with my hands, doing something productive? I looked up where I could learn how to be a plumber, which I gave up because my illustration deadlines were beckoning me.
Without too much stress (only a bit of cursing because the pot refused to be bolted against the wall) our handy man finished the job.

This week we’ve hired a house painter, who will paint our windowsills, a job we cannot do ourselves because it’s too high up.
Again, I felt this pang of envy (maybe jealousy even) in my chest. Do I want to be a house painter now?

While I pondered this, I sat down behind my computer to do my emails. A client asked to move forward a deadline by a few weeks, which isn’t possible because pretty much all my deadlines are tightly scheduled. My days are pretty much filled to the brim, so moving forward a deadline means working evenings, nights and weekends.

(we live with four houses under one roof, a very typical Dutch ‘row house’)

Suddenly, it hit me: another reason I burned-out is that there’s no wiggle room whatsoever for me to move. I am caged like a bird by my deadlines.

And this is why I’m jealous of our handy men: they do the work for a set price. It doesn’t matter if the job takes a few days longer, as long as they get it done. That lowers the amount of stress they experience.
I realised it’s not the kind of job I’m necessarily jealous of: it’s how they go to work. And, to be fair, the financial reward they get.

If you want to work five days a week, plan for three

A few months ago, our plumber told me that he plans three or four days per work week. “I need time to rest after a work week and in case a job takes a bit longer, I have some days left to extend the job. I never plan jobs back-to-back.”

I’ve been planning jobs back-to-back as long as I can remember and what would help me a lot is having more room between jobs. I kind of have to plan it tightly to secure income, but maybe it’s time to see if there are other ways.

One day per week for unplanned business

Recently I started to schedule one day a week that I don’t fill with any assignments. I’ve been using that day for unplanned correction rounds for clients and unforeseen work, like admin and catching up with deadlines because the other days didn’t go as planned. Because even after 15 years of full-time freelancing, I still forget how much of my day revolves around emailing and phone calls, instead of actually drawing or writing.

To plan that day I have had to say ‘no’ to some jobs, so I do feel the financial consequences of it already. But I believe I’m a better freelancer if I’m less stressed (and not burnt out).

One of the paintings I made when I felt a great urge, while having 12,435 deadlines to finish. The F-word is blurred for those we might take offence. Let me know in the comments if you take offence (I still am getting to know the audience here).

The need for pottering

I’m coming to a point where I want to introduce a second ‘back up’-day in my week. Not to work for clients but to give myself time to play again. What I’ve been missing a lot these last few years is time for pottering, as the English say. In Dutch I use the word ‘aanklooien’.

Pottering around is a key ingredient for the happiness of any creative person. That is the time that you give your brain and hands time and space to develop new ways of thinking, or develop new skills. To make good work, you need brainspace to let ideas simmer. Without pottering/aanklooien I won’t grow as I’d like to grow.

At times I feel such an urge to create something for me. It’s almost as urgent as needing to pee really badly. Like with pee I can hold it in for a period of time, until it comes out of me like a big wave, and I feel immense relief afterwards. That’s how much I need creative space and time for my own work. On my Instagram account for my paintings, quite a few posts start with ‘I had the urge to paint’.

I don’t have the answers to everything yet: I’m writing and sharing as I learn. I’m very eager to hear how other people do this.
It’s a slow process and I need to be more patient than I am, but I trust I’ll get there eventually.

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→ Article to read: 6 Causes of Burnout, and How to Avoid Them (Harvard Business Review)