“Try and bring some inspiration to your life outside of work”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

I work at a design agency and we’re all about creating innovative solutions. But given the current economy and the work we’re getting, honestly I find it quite boring and it makes me not want to do any of the work. I thought it was a phase and blamed it on the winter, which turned into blaming it on my time of the month, to now actually accepting that I just don’t have the motivation to be the creative that I know I am. Is it just me or can anyone else relate?

Why don’t I feel creatively inspired and motivated at work?

Alex Bec, CEO of It’s Nice That, Creative Lives in Progress and If You Could Jobs:

Thank you for such an honest, confronting question – and don’t feel alone. If it’s any comfort, I’ve met more creatives and creative business owners in the last two years that are struggling with exactly this, than in my previous 15 years of work! The reality is that things are harder than they used to be economically, and creatively, so finding inspiration and keeping yourself energised for your work need more proactive endeavours than ever before.

So stop and have a think. What is it that inspires you? Not about work, more generally? What makes you smile? What stories do you like reading / watching? What music gets you going? Where do you like going? It sounds forced, but start by looking there and forget about work for the moment. Try and bring some inspiration to your life outside of work, so that you have a little more energy and chutzpah as you log in at 9am. I personally find Paul Smith (the fashion designer) an incredible inspiration, and he famously said “You can find inspiration in everything” – we worked with him once to collate some advice about how you do that here that you might find helpful.

Then at work, you have to take things into your own hands, and not wait for things to change for you. If you can’t influence the type of work you’re doing in your day-to-day (which most of us can’t), find excuses, moments, opportunities to work on things that mean something to you in your gaps. Either before or after work, or in a lunch break, or extend a regular meeting to give yourself 30 minutes extra to work on something that’ll bring you joy. You need to take responsibility for your happiness at work – and if you’re not happy, find ways to chip away at changing that in your current role, or start looking elsewhere…

Try to stick with it and keep faith that better times are ahead – and take solace that it’s definitely not just you…

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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