What’s your creative outlet?

(April 1, 2025 Newsletter)

A client recently mentioned that he has no hobbies. He works and spends his limited free time with his family. When pressed on the point, he noted that he loves cooking (and specifically cooking with his family).

• He might not have considered it a hobby before that conversation, but if he gets to make something and feels more energized after doing it, that counts in my book.

  
  

Why it matters

Having a creative outlet is crucial for recharging. It’s a salve for burnout in high pressure jobs and can even improve your work outputs for all the following reasons:

1. It allows you to use your brain in different ways, which can give you perspective and clear your mind of the details and pressures that weigh it down.

2. It reminds you that your identity does not only consist entirely of your job (however important it may be).

3. It often involves different sensory experiences than how you spend your workdays, like moving your body, using your voice, and seeing and smelling different things. We can’t just be in front of our computers all day.

4. It enables an emotional release. Do you feel lighter, more relaxed, or fulfilled after? Excellent.

5. You can feel great satisfaction from creating something, however small the output or however quick it lasts.

Creative outlet best practices

Not sure what “counts” as a creative outlet? Here are some more guidelines:

• Think of the activities that filled you with energy as a child. Go from there.

• Individual and group activities count. If socializing is important to you, find others who share your interests, and if alone time is what you need, that works too.

• If you prefer, follow guidelines. No, you don’t have to be coming up with everything from scratch for it to be considered creative. Adult coloring books, joining a choir, taking an improv class, or baking from a recipe all involve making something (as does building Ikea bookshelves!). Blank pages are great but aren’t for everyone.

• The cadence is yours. Do it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or whenever the muse comes. Consistency doesn’t matter that much when choosing an outlet.

• Anything you create is creative. Last week I taught a pre-Passover program at my synagogue. It might not seem like a creative activity, but it hits all the above criteria.

Prioritizing your outlets

How can you carve out time for your creative outlet among all the other urgent tasks?

• Vary the pressure. Sometimes you only have a few minutes and can stop halfway through. Sometimes you’re building toward a conclusion and you have to carve out extra time for it. I find that the fact that I can turn the pressure up or down to be helpful in making the activities interesting enough without being overwhelming in scope or commitment.

• Habit-stack it. If you connect the activity to parts of your day or week that are already happening, you’re more likely to do it. I journal on trains and planes, for example. Before becoming a mom, I had other time slots for journaling, but public transportation has become my favored spot these days.  

• Vary the activities. There’s no need to stick to one – I write for different reasons than I sing and bake for different reasons than I collage (which I haven’t done in years but the muse is coming back!).

• Do it for or with people you love. Coming back to the client who said he cooks with his kids, the fact that it’s a family activity is part of why he does it. It adds motivation (and accountability) to involve others.

  
  

Final thought: If your creative outlet involves sitting in front of the computer, like you’re writing a book or have a computer game that you love, try to still find some way to build in physical movement so you can differentiate it from how you spend your workdays.

What’s your creative outlet? If this newsletter has inspired you to pick your guitar back up, pull a recipe book off the shelves, or dust off your tap shoes, please reply and let me know! Also, if you have an ongoing creative outlet that you want to share, send it my way as well.

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The Coaching Corner

Pre-encourage

In order to be ready to say something supportive the next time a team member comes to you with a problem, make a list in advance of what you admire about them. Priming your own thoughts will make it more likely that when they come with a question you will remind them of their own values, strengths, or resources before diving in to help.

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Recommendations

Two brilliant podcast episodes that I listened to this past week:

• “The voices in your head with Ethan Kross” on Rethinking with Adam Grant. For a long time, I’ve looked for a resource that sufficiently summarizes the variety of ways to regulate one’s emotions. I found this succinct and thought provoking.

• “Charles Duhigg: Asking questions that instantly build connection” on the Jefferson Fisher Podcast. I read Supercommunicators a few months ago and thought this interview with Duhigg touches on the main points in accessible ways.

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