Preventing Burnout - Choosing What Stays
We tell ourselves burnout is just part of working in digital media. It isn’t. Stress is inevitable - burnout is what happens when we stop believing we have any say over it.
I was reminded of this delivering the Masterclass, ‘Preventing Burnout in a Digital World,’ an hour-long session for NFTS, YouTube and BBC’s CreateX Connect platform, built for participants across three of their current programmes.
Building the session, the digital media examples felt almost too obvious. Of course algorithms create pressure. Of course the always-on nature of platforms takes a toll. What I hadn’t anticipated was how much deeper it went once participants started talking. As soon as people began describing their own relationship with their algorithms - the checking, the second-guessing, the low hum of always being ‘on’ - it made the point land in a way that preparing the session never could.
Social connections
Step outside that room for a moment, though and the same pattern holds for all of us - not just people who work in digital media. It isn’t just about YouTube or Instagram. It’s phones. Tablets. Laptops. Every social connection we carry with us, in the office and out of it, at 11pm on a Thursday as much as 9am on a Monday.
The assumption, understandably, is that this is simply the cost of working in the industry - something to tolerate rather than something we get to shape.
I don’t believe that’s the case - not as a coach, a facilitator or someone who’s spent decades in this industry myself. The pressures are real, but very few of them are actually fixed. Most are habits we’ve simply stopped questioning.
What adds value to your working life?
That distinction is worth sitting with in August. Not because the pressures disappear over summer but because the quieter pace gives us room to actually look at them - which platforms, habits and connections genuinely add value to our working lives, and which we’ve just never questioned. Boundaries built deliberately, rather than by default.
A few starting points, if you want to try this for yourself:
Pick one platform, app or device and notice, honestly, what it gives you against what it costs you.
Choose one boundary you can hold this week - a time you switch off, a notification you turn off, a check-in you skip.
Ask what you’d actually lose if you let a habit go. If the honest answer is ‘not much,’ that’s worth paying attention to.
None of this requires disconnecting from your industry, or your work. It simply asks you to choose, deliberately, rather than by default.
This is the thinking behind Creative Reset’s approach to burnout and self-leadership - not a call to disconnect entirely, but an invitation to take ownership of where the lines sit.
Where in your working life have you stopped questioning what's actually optional?
If you’d like to talk about running this session for your team, or explore 1:1 coaching around sustainable boundaries, book a discovery call.