23. Avoiding Burn Out as a Musician

In this episode of the Music Executive podcast, host Cinnamon Denise explores how musicians, producers, songwriters, and other creatives in the music industry can avoid burnout. 

Drawing from personal experience working as a live sound engineer and musician, she breaks down the four identified levels of burnout—pre-burnout, early stage burnout, burnout, and full wildfire burnout—and shares strategies to prevent reaching the severe stages. 

She discusses the importance of maintaining physical health, staying creatively inspired, and ensuring clarity in professional commitments. Cinnamon Denise introduces a practical 30-day habit focusing on the three most important aspects of life—self, loved ones, and career—to maintain balance and avoid burnout. 

This episode serves as a guide for music executives to manage their wellbeing while thriving in the demanding music industry.

Chapters

• 2:05 Understanding the Levels of Burnout
• 6:42 Strategies to Avoid Burnout

Transcript

Hey, music executives. This is the Music Executive podcast, a pod where we dive into what it takes to thrive in the music industry. I'm your host, sentimental, and today we are talking about avoiding burnout as a musician, producer, songwriter, creative, whatever you are in the music industry. So I wanna paint a picture for you, a picture that you probably relate to.

I used to work as a live sound engineer at a popular music venue in the Atlanta area, and the holidays were the best time of year for that club. Now, I did not have access to the club's revenue or anything of that nature, so I cannot speak to revenue, but I will say we were the busiest during these holidays, Valentine's Day, Christmas, and Friday.

So Friday is a holiday, depending on your payday schedule. Okay? So if you know, you know. But we had to be so vigilant about these particular holidays or days. Now, why am I sharing this with you? Because before I diversified my skillset a little more, I was a solely live gig musician, and I loved and hated the holidays because I knew I wasn't gonna spend any time with my loved ones.

But I also knew that I would not be broke as a joke come March the following year if I played my cards right. So I have a gig through November in December. And sometimes several gigs in a single day, all under the classic toxic freelancer guise of, I gotta work because I don't know if or when the work or gig is gonna come again.

And that's real because a woman that doesn't work. Doesn't eat, and I was living and breathing that. However, I would be so burnt out by the time January came that I literally could not even take a gig if I wanted to burnt out to the max. So on today's the music executive episode, I'm here to share what I have done to avoid burnout altogether without sacrificing my income or missing out on opportunities.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please don't forget to give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you're really enjoying the show, leave us a review and share it with a friend. And if you want us to cover a topic that we haven't yet, email us at sentimental production@gmail.com and we'll see what we can do.

Alright, let's do this. Music executives. Let's start by acknowledging the fact that there are levels to burnout. There are levels to this. I have personally identified for me the four levels of burnout, and for each level of burnout, I have identified the state of three aspects that contributed to that burnout.

So these three aspects are my physical state, my creative state, and my clarity state. Stick with me. Let's start with burnout. Level one. I call it pre burnout. In pre burnout, my physical state is incredible. My body is at its best. I also practice yoga and weightlift and run. So I have the energy and capacity for all three of those things in pre burnout.

Being a musician is a supremely and deceptively physical job, so I don't wanna skimp on how important physical health is for us. So in this state, again, my voice is strong. I'm not straining. I can do a three hour show with no problem. My creative state is a one. I'm having so much fun creatively, and if I'm not, I can give myself the space to get creatively inspired.

Again, my clarity state and this one is so important because all money is not good money. Every gig is simply not worth the headache. But in pre burnout, the state of my clarity is beyond. I have clarity on all the things I'm involved in or have agreed. Two, so I know where I'm supposed to be and when I'm supposed to be there, and what I'm supposed to be doing before, during, and after I get there.

Lastly, in pre burnout, my clarity state, I am fully present. I am not at rehearsal thinking about email or vice versa. I'm not writing music. Thinking about my social media strategy, I am fully present and able to focus on the task at hand. So let's go to the next level of musician burnout. I call this stage early stage burnout.

In early stage burnout. My physical state is not the best, but I'm managing. I may notice that I'm a little dehydrated. I may start experiencing some anxiety, but it is not debilitating in any way. I may be falling asleep when I go to bed more easily because I'm a little tired, but I sleep fine. My creative state, I am still enjoying my work.

I'm enjoying whatever I'm doing to the fullest still. Right. And I will also say that the more. One creates, of course, the capacity for creativity it spans. So keep this in mind in relation to you, and I wish I would've been this consistently creative a decade ago, but creativity is a muscle. It only works if you work it.

My clarity state in early stage burnout is getting a little thin. I may not know exactly what the set list is because I didn't hold myself or the band leader accountable to send out the set list at least a week or a few days in advance, for example. But because I'm good at what I do, I'm managing, okay.

The next stage of burnout is burnout. My physical state, my back is probably hurting. Unfortunately, I have chronic back pain, but it's especially bad when I'm stressed. So there you go. I am actually fatigued. This is a new phenomenon in my thirties. Fatigue, like literally cannot go on. Baby Elephant is down.

There is no pushing through. I might actually collapse fatigue. My creative state, my creativity is shot. I have a hard time writing lyrics. I usually have to edit a few times to get lyrics that I'm happy with. That's normal, but I mean, in burnout, the lyrics and or the music never comes. My clarity, state clarity.

What is that? I have a calendar, but I really don't even remember half of the stuff on it in burnout or, it's unclear what the thing on the calendar even is like what is this meeting or what is this gig for and where is it? Is it canceled? Wait, are we rehearsing tonight? Like no clarity at all. Also, I want to know.

That in this state, I have noticed that I am not super fun to be around for obvious reasons. Um, I'm not ashamed to admit that I may be a little grumpy. And the last stage of burnout is full wildfire burnout. My physical state, everything hurts. Probably. I am constantly straining. As a singer, I'm probably taking a Tylenol every day at this.

Point for my back, my creativity state don't even ask me to make anything. I don't even like music. What is music? I don't like it. I want to clarify that in this state, this is not depression, but it totally could be depression too. So if you don't have any mental issues that you deal with, for whatever reason, it feels like depression, pretty much.

And for me, it's been in this wildfire level burnout that I made. Revelations like the shouldn't. I have a Grammy by now episode, which I will link in the show notes, but in this stage I'm working so hard. And actually getting less results. Okay, so to recap, we've got pre burnout, early stage burnout, burnout, and full wildfire burnout.

And let's be very clear, we want to live in pre burnout and intervene on ourselves when we get to early stage burnout, period. So how did I start to avoid. Anything beyond pre burnout? Better yet, how did I start identifying these stages in myself and then avoiding them altogether? So I noticed this pattern first and foremost, that usually when I wanted to not even make any music anymore, I recognized that it was usually because I was frustrated with how I.

Dissatisfied with music. I was, and I thought to myself, well, maybe if I identify what is most important to me as a whole human, I'll be able to identify where I should spend more or less of my time, energy, and skills. So I started a habit where I poured into the three most important things in my life every day for 30.

Days. I figured if I could just do this habit for 30 days and it doesn't work, I'll just try something else. But it worked. So here we are. Here's this episode. I identified the three most important aspects of my life. I was extreme, I know, but I said to myself, if I were to die tomorrow, what would I regret not putting on this list?

Today I also limited myself to three things because anything more than that was overwhelming for me. And I made number one, me, like me, sentimental the human. And if you do this habit, I strongly recommend you make number one you as well, because this is your life and you have to live with you. Now, number two was my loved ones.

So my partner, my family, my friends, my dog. And number three was my career. And I actually did not put. Music career intentionally, because I felt like that did not encompass everything in a holistic way. So I have my three things, and then I said, every day I have to do one thing for each of these categories.

Now remember, I was like, if I die tomorrow, I don't wanna regret not pouring into these three things today. So the caveat here. But very important was that the thing that I chose to do for these three things could not take me more than 10 minutes because I still had things to do. I did not want this experiment to take over my world or make me feel like, Ugh, this is another thing that I have to do.

So, for example, I would meditate for 10 minutes. That's number one. Me. I would send a nice message to someone that was number two, my loved ones. And then I would write a verse. That's number three, my career, or I would go on a walk. Number one, me, I would play with my dog. That's number two, my loved ones.

And I would update my LinkedIn profile for 10 minutes. That's number three, my career. I try to decide every morning what my thing would be, and no matter what happened that day, I made sure that I took care of the three most important things in my life in some way. I did this for 30 days. I missed about two days total, I think, but I assessed at the end of my 30 days, and what I found was I was no longer in full blown wildfire burnout.

I'm not gonna say that I didn't experience burnout, but I was either in early stage burnout or just burnout. So I have continued doing this now for 90 days, and I can share with you that I have not. Teetered past early stage burnout for about two months now, and I started to be really proud of myself. I started noticing that my relationships were better, my house was cleaner.

I was able to put love into projects that needed my attention, like this podcast, which is why I've been on it. But even more so, I started getting a hold of my, no. I was feeling really confident about declining projects. I recognize it. Saying no helped me avoid wildfire burnout altogether. I am still a work in progress, but I just don't believe in working myself to the ground anymore.

As musicians, producers, songwriters, what have you, we are people trying to be really good at a lot of things and I believe I am really good at a lot of things, but a lot of things I am not good at. So. I hope that through this episode and insight, if you take anything away from it, you recognize that you cannot and should not do it all, and we are juggling a million things, and it's easy to just skip the fact that we are here to live.

Not just make music, not just song write, not just make podcasts, not just edit audio. We are here to live and. Our avenue of choice in this industry is simply a benefit to creating lives that we love. All right, so I'm off the soapbox, but I really want you to know that you are not alone If you are trying to figure this music thing out, I get it.

I struggle too, but you got this. That's it for this episode. I'm rooting for you music executives. Follow me on social media at sentimental. That is C-I-N-N-A-M-O-N-T-A-L, and I'll see you on the next episode later.