My agent got in touch recently about an article that I might or might not have written on here about how to deal with burnout. I’ve sort of touched on this on a number of occasions because I’ve definitely suffered from it myself and it’s not very pleasant. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest.’ In my own case I hit the wall when running my own production company, piling everything I had into the wrong kind of work and psychologically building a bunch of problems that I’ve now put firmly behind me. The problem with being a freelancer and indeed with working in this kind of arena is that nothing is regular. Perversely I believe irregularity is the secret to keeping everything fresh but you have to keep it in balance. The boom or bust life of being a freelancer means we tend to over commit. It’s very hard to say no to work because one of those extended periods of inactivity could be just round the corner and we all know that you only real the effects of that 2 months later when the invoices have all been processed, you’re working your ass off but you’ve got no money. Depressing.

Freelancers are specialists, we ought to be better at our jobs than in-house people because we’ve got to be. That’s not always the case but one of the main reasons for going freelance is the opportunity to make more money and with that comes more responsibility, a more focussed day’s work and a much greater exposure to a varied diet of work. The problem with all of this is that, essentially, every time you walk into a new company you’re starting from scratch again and you have to rebuild the routine. Doing this repeatedly, week in, week out, saying yes to every job, quickly becomes incredibly wearing.

My own experience of burnout came as a result of working in a company, my own one, and I just talked myself into a place where I was chained to my desk, defining my life through work, getting up early, going to bed late. As long as I was doing something, I could persuade myself that I was being useful. I was trying to make a name for myself in music videos, without a huge amount of support from my co-workers (not their fault by the way, it’s a crappy industry and it really couldn’t sustain us for the amount of time required to make it work) and was cranking out treatments three or four times a week. That’s a lot of creative output without any real end result. I started to genuinely hate what I was doing and couldn’t take any joy out of it whatsoever.

The answer was to leave the company, go it on my own and experience some new things. Best move I ever made. In the last two years I’ve developed incredibly quickly, learning a bunch of new skills, working on some great projects, gaining way more confidence in what I do, and becoming very excited about the possibilities in front of us as digital technologies mature. I’m just as busy as I always was but I’ve managed to wrestle my life into balance. A year and a half ago was a very different story. I was taking on every single job I could, trying to earn as much money as possible, crowding out the fun personal projects that make all this worthwhile and chasing the buck. I was in danger of overdoing it and repeating the mistakes of my life at Chrome Productions.

After winning the Bahamas 14 islands film challenge I spent the prize money on a holiday and then didn’t really do much for five months. I shot an hour drama pilot and a short film but very little else. It was great. Since that moment I made a pledge to myself to take on only enough paid work to get by and leave plenty of time in between to unwind, recharge the mojo and bust a groove on the personal stuff. That’s been incredibly fruitful. I don’t direct music videos anymore, I have no interest in commercials. If I direct, it’s for me, it’s my stuff, it’s on my terms and that’s proving to be just perfect. But it’s not just about time. The other lesson I learned, bizarrely from writing this blog, was that other people can do so much work for you. I’m a preditor+, a snarling quintuple threat animal who’ll take an entire project, do it all myself, and deliver it back completed, taking all the cash along the way. I’ve had to learn that other people can and should help. Sharing the workload, retaining responsibility, objectivity and freshness, and kicking ass. It’s so much better.

These are all lessons learned the hard way. I believe that I’ve got the creative nuts to be a total badass and I’ve got a wonderfully broad skillet now but really my greatest skill I believe is an understanding of the appropriateness of a creative idea. Above and beyond everything else that’s a decision making skill. And it’s the one that’s now paying the bills. Managing a team of creatives and keeping them on the right path by making the right decisions is really the core competence of a director and it’s only now that I’m beginning to appreciate what that means. So, weirdly, I’ve begun a collection. A collection of talented people on whom I can rely. I should have done this a long time ago, but their energy and their talent keeps me fresh, keeps me alive to the possibilities in the work that I do. They’ve also opened my eyes to some really brilliant new creative avenues. I’m looking hard into bringing a ‘live’ element to film, combining it with my own love of music, remixing my skillset for a new kind of endeavour.

Burnout tends to be an introspective malaise, a bit like depression. It’s very hard to admit that you are burnt out. But the real solution to the problem is simply to lean on other people. Talk about it. This blog is more therapy than anything else. I don’t really give a monkeys whether anyone reads it or not. And for that reason it’s become an incredibly important part of my overall psychological well-being. If that isn’t odd I don’t know what is. For me, the solution to burnout was to reignite my curiosity by digging into new things, DSLRs, transmedia, blogging, 3D animation, comedy, drama. And it worked. Whatever your situation, as creatives, we have to be childish in our appreciation of the world, because that’s the only way we can keep our own fragile little spark firing. The good news is it doesn’t take much to get it going again, but you can’t expect to do it on your own, so don’t try.

Evolution is a necessary part of creative life. Final Cut X is a great example of this. A year from now I’m pretty certain we’ll see it as the most indispensable tool in our kit bag but at the moment everyone despises it. Personally, I needed to shrug off the old me and the battles I was trying to fight. Now, I’m starting to do the best work of my life, honest, interesting and uniquely me. I don’t doubt that at some point in the future I’ll look at myself and see all the old habits creeping back, but now I know exactly how to combat them. Change is good, embrace it, don’t be scared of listening to the little voice that says, there’s something interesting over there, why don’t we have a look. If you don’t have that voice then you’re not reading enough blogs, you’re not going to enough performances, you’re not being curious enough. I hate the phrase ‘think outside the box’ but it doesn’t hurt to look outside that box from time to time.

I’m #1 so why worry?

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