Stress is no stranger in the creative world. Tight deadlines, demanding clients, that final push to get a project out the door — we’ve all felt the adrenaline (and sometimes the angst) that comes with the job. But how do you know when normal work stress has tipped over into something more serious?

Aimee Davies, Mental Health Educator and Counsellor at The Hey Mate Project, and Simon Lee, Chief Creative Officer at The Hallway, have seen this play out firsthand — for themselves and their teams. Here’s what they shared with Andy Wright, CEO of Streamtime and Founder of Never Not Creative, about spotting burnout before it takes you down with it.

Understanding normal stress versus burnout

Aimee explains that stress, in itself, isn’t the villain here — it’s part of how we’re wired to function. "Stress is a normal response we have so we all experience stress so our stress hormone cortisol is at its highest in the morning it's what wakes us up gets us up dressed online on time you know there's a sense of urgency but we can cope and then it decreases."

The key difference? Stress has a cycle: "We will go along there will be a sense of urgency we will respond and then we'll recover and then we'll go again so if you think about when you're driving a car a red light you stop you wait and then you go again."

Burnout happens when that cycle breaks: "Continuous exposure to a particular stressor or stresses... it's that continuous exposure without rest and recovery that then I guess leads into burnout."

Recognising the early warning signs

One big red flag is that voice in your head that keeps whispering I’m done: "If you're thinking to yourself I need a break I need a holiday I'm tired I'm exhausted that's probably a good sign that you might need to rest and recover," says Aimee.

Another clue? The things that normally light you up… don’t: "Burnout is a depletion of physically emotionally spiritually when numb that sense of joy can be void... when those things that usually bring you joy don't that's a really clear sign that something might be up."

You can’t always see it yourself

Sometimes you’re the last to notice you’re burning out. Aimee shares: "I'll be very honest I was burnt out about this time last year so you know the girl who's talking about burnt out was burnt out I know the irony with that."

For her, it showed up in the small moments she kept skipping: "I realized that I hadn't seen her for about six weeks and I actually found the pattern that I fell into that made me not go see her... I wasn't allowing myself time to rest you know it's not a huge request it's like an hour for a cup of tea in the afternoon on a Wednesday but that was enough to sort of get me a little bit offkilter."

More often than not, the people around you will spot it first: "The reason I found out that I was burnt out was actually through conversations with friends and family sort of checking in on me or you know you seem like a little bit tired a little bit exhausted."

You can’t outrun burnout — you have to change the cycle

Aimee says it best: "You can't outrun or outwork burnout and I'd love for you to take that holiday that's great but if you return back to work exactly and life exactly the same way it's going to happen again."

Recovery isn’t a luxury — it’s part of the job. "It's about mitigating changing doesn't have to be dramatic allowing ourselves that time to rest."

Balance the big pushes with true downtime

Simon knows the creative industry will always have crunch times — that’s part of the gig. But they should come with proper recovery: "Great creative workplaces are very much given give and take give and take environments and where where where there is that balance because so you get to enjoy the excitement of that throwing everything in because that's what it's all about but then there's the there's there's the downtime the down time afterwards super super super important."

He adds: "I'm very conscious to ensure that once that project is delivered that we have the that we have we we we have the downtime."

Build in your own self-checks

Aimee encourages you to get intentional about checking in on yourself: "What are your temperature gauges you know is it that you do a journal and you reflect on yourself daily is it that you do a debrief with a mentor a manager a friend a family member how like how do you gauge yourself because sometimes like I like to think that I'm quite self-aware when I realize I had no self-awareness with that at all."

She loves the mental health continuum as a quick check: "Having a look at like the mental health continuum because that will sort of give you a temperature gauge of where you're sitting on a sort of daily basis and so if you see that you're sort of sitting on the lower end of the mental health continuum for some consecutive days it might mean that we might need to do some stuff to fill our cup up."

Take action before you hit the wall

Don’t wait until you’re running on fumes. Aimee suggests: "Think about what it is that you're missing right now what is it that you're doing a lot of or what is that stressor that might be stressing you out so if it's a project and that project has a an end date what is it that you can implement between that and that end date that is realistic that can help you with that."

Knowing the difference between stress and burnout isn’t just about ticking off symptoms — it’s about noticing when the push is constant and the pause never comes. Remember: stress with recovery can be motivating, but stress without recovery will run you into the ground.

Listen to yourself. Listen to the people who care about you. And build the downtime into your work — you’re not a machine, and your best creative work will never come from an empty tank.

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