The COVID-19 creativity slump

In the last few months of the Covid-19 lockdown, I faced severe work-related stress, anxiety, and an overall lack of creativity. This is a retrospective of the time we’ve had and how it continues to evolve.

Among my friends and colleagues, I have heard of a common response to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. Everyone is fighting for a different cause — looking after children, looking after ailing family, working through the stress, keeping deadlines, completing courses and whatnot. We all wish to look at this as an opportunity to feel normal, either by continuing the course or sometimes disrupting the course by introducing new parameters.

This is a potential problem because as a UX designer, my work depends on consistently applying creativity to come up with solutions. This situation is seriously affecting the way I work, draw motivation and deliver results. Here are a few observations from the last few months of working from home.

Work from home?

It took me a while to understand that I am not working from home, I am working at home in a pandemic of a global scale which will affect each and every individual. This realisation led me to believe that no amount of productivity tactics can work and there was a feeling of letting go. Letting go of the expectations I put on myself, like learning new skills or exercising every day. But what didn’t really change for me was the way of working. We’re having the same meetings we did before, in fact even more than before, because we’re mentally equipped to be in many places at once (only if zoom let us do that).

I cannot visualise anymore

As my team moved to online meetings, we were invariably spending ~12 hours on the screen. I started missing the time in between meetings- when I’d walk from one meeting room to the next, stopover the pantry for coffee or chat with folks. Looking at the screen all day has inhibited my power to visualise. As a highly visual person, lacking that external stimulus to visualise is harming my creative process to a great extent. The zoom fatigue is real. Squinting to concentrate on the small text on the screen, constantly looking at myself in the zoom video and having to focus on several people at once is just to name a few.

I have always believed in generating ideas by being inspired by the things around you, nature, the people, objects and animals. Now that we’ve taken all of that away, what’s left is the power of my own mind’s imagination. And my mind is always overworked.

Information overload

While everyone grapples with the pandemic, there’s graphs, charts, news and everything that you need to know about the virus. I found myself checking the news ever so often, looking at the statistics of the global pandemic and reading about its impact.

Then there’s the overload of the online workshops and classes, webinars, online conferences, youtube and Instagram live sessions, free courses and talks. I would like to do all of it because it’s now available at my fingertips! I generally tried to resist the temptation to enrol myself anywhere because I knew the current situation needed coping time and I just couldn’t take anymore.

Indefinity

“When will this be over?”
The answer is never. The truth is, this will lead to some permanent changes in our ecosystem. While I try to work my way through this uncertainty, it has put so much emphasis on my mind to take care of my relationships, friends, family and myself.

The resilience we develop during this time will take us to the end and beyond but the road to the patience and resilience is a long and winding one.

One step towards authenticity

I experienced severe anxiety during many of the work-related tasks and my reaction to it was mostly to extent of pushing through somehow. But one thing I learned during this time was to embrace authenticity. The struggle of expressing these emotions was real, and I was lucky to be surrounded by peers who support the cause and The rawness of this situation has made me aware of the emotions I feel during work. It is not to stop yourself from feeling it but managing it, taking breaks and evaluating what could be done better.

Managing the creativity slump

If you’re feeling any of the above, trust me you’re not alone. I started making some mental notes on getting out of the creative block and here are a few things that worked well and help me get motivated.

• Try not to do everything. Yes, it may be tempting to pick up a new hobby, work on my Instagram profile, start a new blog and learn a new skill on Coursera, while doing well at work. I need to pace myself. There’s absolutely no need to work out a hyper-successful lockdown schedule.
• Taking short walks in between work. Sometimes I go out for lunch or take a walk across the market. It helps to get visually involved in the surroundings, notice the colours, breathe in some air and come back with fresh new thoughts.
• Listening to audiobooks has increased my visualisation, juxtaposition and overall sense of calmness of listening to a good audiobook. I try to do a 30–40-minute session at a time.
• This is tricky to say, but, unfollow anyone on social media who doesn’t make me feel my best self or that I am not doing enough. I am doing the best I can ☺️

What are some of the other ways you found helpful? Let me know in the comments below.

Originally published at http://nupuraggarwal.co on July 30, 2020.