Creator burnout and breakdown

Film Stuff podcast

Lots of creators—especially young, successful ones—publicly admit to being emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted by their channels. Why is that? And while we know burnout is a real and serious problem, we have to wonder. How much burnout is true burnout, and how much is because many creators are new this: new to managing professional life, new to making art, and new to the notoriously demanding work of filmmaking. We look at creator burnout from many angles and even suggest ways to avoid it. Show notes: • Leigh mentions details about how the YouTube algorithm works "as far as we know." That paper she read that made her think YouTube's recommendations are so great? It's from 2014, from a Google research paper titled "Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations" https://research.google/pubs/pub45530/ • If you really want to understand the algorithm deeply, we recommend following Matt Glielen and the team at Little Monster's research https://www.littlemonstermediaco.com/our-research • "That original guy who wrote 'Burnout'" is a psychologist named Herbert Freudenberger, who coined the term in the '70s based on his own personal frustrations. He literally wrote the book on it https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553200488/ • Burnout isn't just a YouTube problem, either. Anne Helen Petersen wrote a great piece on why burnout is rampant among Millennials, not just creators https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work • In 2018 there seemed to be a YouTube trend of young creators quitting because of burnout, overwork, and stress. The Guardian wrote a piece that covered a lot of the same angles we did in more depth https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/08/youtube-stars-burnout-fun-bleak-stressed • Soo Zee talks about the emotional difficulty that comes from getting instant feedback on your work. The fancy term for this is "emotional labor," and it has a long history of being an unacknowledged form of work, especially on social media platforms. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona • In fact, social media's impact on our mental health is well documented https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/status-of-mind.html See also https://www.openculture.com/2013/08/why-social-media-makes-us-lonely.html • James Cameron on curiosity, and why he takes time between his films to explore areas of personal interest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVfd6fg7QsM • James Cameron did indeed head to the jungles for Avatar's sequels https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/28/james-cameron-avatar-2-brazil goin' off to the jungles • When Leigh says she agrees with Adam Grant's definition of burnout, she's really agreeing with what he argues in this episode about burnout on his TED podcast WorkLife https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_burnout_is_everyone_s_problem Music: https://www.purple-planet.com