Do you know how refill the creativeness?

Your body is much more interested in creating a new life and concentrating on that. Everything else pales, as it should. You feel really tired for a reason, remember.

Wow. It sounds like you’ve really taken on a lot.

I don’t know much about jobs or babies, but I know what it’s like to feel creative burnout. Spreading yourself too thin can really decrease the quality of your work. It’s definitely not a good position to be in.

Obviously, you’re a multitasker. Can you pawn off some of your tasks to other people? Find someone you trust to work on one of your projects? It might help to take a step back from it all and organize your projects. Perhaps dedicating yourself to organizing stuff will refresh you and regenerate some of your creativity.

Congrats on the pregnancy!

@shadling – thanks! ya i have a bad habbit of wanting to take it all on. i’m going to try to push back due dates on some projects – some are just little flyers so no biggie.

Some of the responses to this question might offer ideas that will help you.

Being pregnant is not like anything else. People react to it differently. Give yourself some leeway. You might have to fall back on the tried-and-true solutions for your projects for a little while.

If you have subordinates, have a “Brainstorming Day.” Get toys, creative books, noise makers and funny hats, maybe even whoopee cushions. Present the problems that need creative genus to resolve. Like, “Create a marketing strategy for xyz gadget.” Tell your people to come up with a perfect marketing strategy, assuming they had an unlimited budget. Throw all ideas out, no matter how crazy. No negative feedback allowed. Set a time limit (maybe 20 minutes) for each problem. In the afternoon, take each problem and the ideas presented and see if your team can crystallize each problem into a really workable solution. One creative person is great, but to be able to tap the creative minds of a team is even better, and especially when you’re feeling like you muse has abandoned you.
Then again, you could always ask your fellow flutherites for creative ideas!

I’m betting that most flutherers can be categorized in the “creative genus!” Thanks Judi!

Oh, yeah, and there’s the Creative Whack Pack. Somebody gave me one. I never actually used it in the workplace, but just reading the cards started the ideas humming.

I get my creative recharges from interacting with other people (sounds like you do too, @Judi). If you don’t have subordinates, find a few creative friends that you can have lunch with, or people from other departments. Could you do this here, with Flutherers? Maybe, but 5 minutes of face time is worth 50 minutes of blog time (are blog years like dog years?).

Otherwise, some baby-safe energizers could include:
– get enough sleep,
– take time to plug in the earbuds and listen to your fav tunes,
– takes walks when the weather allows,
– learn how to breathe deeply,
– yoga is great, but you can start stretching exercises today.

I know that when my wife was pregnant she also kept things on a very practical and tangible level. It’s like she was so overwhelmed by the enormity of becoming a mother, that she wanted to focus on things that she could easily control. Everything else that required a bit more open-ended thinking was pushed aside. But, after awhile when our son was about 6 months old, she started craving more involved thinking. Nursing, changing diapers and sleep deprivation gets to be so boring that you’ll be aching to do something a little more mentally taxing.

As for me, as a creative director looking to shake the funk, I try involving myself in projects that are creative, just not what I normally do for a living. I tend to do work with wood and build furniture that fits my design aesthetic. No computers allowed. So I’m doing something that inspires me, but without the normal confines and parameters that I’m used to. That’s actually a big push at my company right now to actually encourage everyone to bring their outside passions and interests to the company. That way we force ourselves to look at what do for our clients with fresh eyes. I made everyone bring in objects of interest to them for the bio sections on the website so that they started identifying themselves by their passions and interests and not just where they worked in the past or their job responsibilities. Not sure if it’s working but I did look at everyone a little bit differently once I knew what really inspired them.