🧪 Play as an antidote to burnout

Playing is silly, but necessary!

Author

Bituin Callanta
September 12, 2024

Happy Thursday! 👋

I created this newsletter to explore ways to inject more playfulness in our everyday lives. Here’s the manifesto to know more.

What do we do when go through setbacks or burnouts? I've never encountered anyone going out of their comfort zone who hasn't experienced one of these. We all have ways of riding the wave of emotions that come with it. There are also a million ways to get over it - both healthy and unhealthy.

One of the solutions is to play. Saying "What I need now is play" aloud might sound silly but it makes sense.

Here's what John Cleese said in his book Creativity about how to use play when coping with setbacks:

The anthropologist Gregory Bateson once said, "You can't have a new idea 'til you've got rid of an old one."

This insight helped me to view my fallow periods as preparatory to the fertile ones, and therefore as an inseparable part of the whole creative process. When the juices are not flowing, don't beat yourself up and wonder if you should retrain as a priest. Just sit around and play, until your unconscious is ready to cough up some stuff. Getting discouraged is a total waste of your time.

Setbacks and burnouts are necessary stages when we want to get breakthroughs. It's in the process of playing around where we find glimmers of hope that we'll get out of these dry spells.

Play is not wasting time, when you engage your brain and body, you're benefitting something from it. You may not know it now, but somewhere along the way you'll realize because you did a little of this and a dash of that, you're where you want to be.

But what do you do when you're in this dry spell? I stumbled on a reel by Sha'an d'Anthes through friends on playing as an antidote to creative burnout. It's such a cute way of visualizing things and resonated a lot.

Play can be a tool for burnout - whether you consider yourself as a creative or not.

Too Structured? Loosen up!

Too Chaotic? Add constraints!

Too New? Find what you know!

Too Old? Explore the unfamiliar!

If you don't know where to start, you can start with this list.

When you find yourself procrastinating, it might also help to step back and find ways to make it productive by playing around. Sounds contradictory? It's not.

When was the last time you played around?

Bituin ✨