How to be creative and not burn out when psychological resources are increasingly depleted amid the war, and the classic advice about rest or physical activity no longer works? Vadym Ziuziuk, an interior designer and architect with 20 years of experience, founder and director of Znak Design, a design and architecture studio, shared his non-trivial tips for restoring creative resources with Happy Minday.

1. Find something that will help you release negativity

In any client-oriented business, the internal climate and well-being of the team is significantly affected by communication with clients, especially if it is a long-term project. A few years ago, we cooperated with a customer in the field of residential development who was quite aggressive in making comments during the work process and often created psychological tension in general. We had a contract for several projects in a row, so a lot of negativity had accumulated during this time, which prevented us from focusing on work tasks and blocked our creative flow.

To get rid of this negativity, I started practicing Japanese martial arts, and it was the best decision and investment in my creative productivity. When I had the opportunity to regularly release my inner tension in fights, I began to better manage my psychological state and became more stress-resistant. And thanks to meditation, which is part of the practice, you can distract yourself from the information gum you’re constantly chewing and generally maintain physical and mental health.

Even if everything is going well in work processes and communication with clients, negative emotions are now accumulating because of the war and preventing us from being effective and generating creative ideas. Therefore, it is worth finding ways to help restore psychological balance, and everyone will have their own. Someone needs to walk 10,000 steps and take a deep breath, someone needs to talk to their loved ones or a psychologist, etc.

2. Use tricks that will help you get away from the patterned thinking

If you want to think creatively, try doing familiar things in an unusual way. For example, when brushing your teeth, hold the brush with your left hand instead of your right if you are right-handed. It may seem strange at first, but this is the key to boosting creativity, because in this way the brain gets off the track of its usual thinking and can come up with something interesting.

For example, when I’m sketching a new project and feel uninspired or stuck, I change my perspective: I start drawing or writing down ideas with my other hand. Or I voice the process, which is also unusual for me.

It’s important not to expect that this practice will result in a ready-made idea. It’s about unlocking inspiration by changing your focus.

3. Listen to the team, ask for input and criticism

Another thing I rely on to keep my creativity flowing is teamwork. When you work on a creative project for a long time, you develop a strong emotional attachment to it, which is difficult to get rid of even for those with years of experience. This reduces the critical view of your own work and makes it very difficult to change anything.

Usually, creative teams have a more experienced specialist who critically evaluates the product and gives feedback. But sometimes I notice an unwillingness to trust the opinion of less experienced employees. My insight was that less experience does not mean an inability to provide constructive criticism or to develop an idea in an interesting way. Hierarchy is important, of course, but it needs to be let go sometimes. I started practicing more teamwork, and it significantly increased the speed, efficiency, and quality of our projects.

4. Practice more freedom, less discipline

The project-based work format also stimulates creativity in our team. This was one of my key decisions in 2023, which showed that giving the team more freedom does not mean losing control of projects and destroying discipline.

Before that, we worked on a full schedule, and as a manager, I had to control a lot of formal things, which hindered both me and the team. Now everyone plans their time independently-some people are okay with working at night or on weekends-but everyone meets project deadlines. I feel that people now need more space and freedom of action, and it is worth giving them this opportunity and trusting them more. The new format has dramatically changed the atmosphere, everyone feels more comfortable, less tired, and there is a fresh flow of creative ideas and more motivation to implement them.

If you cannot influence the change in the teamwork format, then even in such circumstances, you can influence your own freedom, because often in creative processes we constrain ourselves too much. The most common situation is self-coercion: when the creative process doesn’t work and instead of switching, you try to get something out of yourself anyway, but in the end, the result is even worse, and you feel guilty about it, blocking your creativity even more. So you need to be more flexible and give your inner creator a break. And it is important to understand that switching does not steal time from the project, because in a more favorable state you will do everything much faster.

5. Try to look beyond the limits

Some clients set such restrictions for the project (financial, visual, etc.) that make it very difficult to create a beautiful, interesting, and functional product. The professionalism of a creative, of course, involves working with constraints, but it also implies the ability to create a non-standard creative project, and this requires more creative freedom.

If you see that you can safely get rid of certain restrictions and that it will help stimulate creativity and significantly strengthen the project, allow yourself to create it that way and show the customer with a solution and arguments why it is better. In most cases, this works because you see the limitations yourself and help the client see them from a different angle, offering a bold creative solution that eliminates all the “buts.” However, this approach is only possible when you have experience and understanding of what the “buts” of the customer’s request are based on, and what you propose to change.

Nowadays, we already live in constant tension and anxiety, which greatly diminish our creative resource. Therefore, if you can avoid creating additional stress factors for yourself and your team, it will be much easier to recover. This is a very simple equation: a creative person + something that releases negativity – additional pressure = an effective creative person.