Recommended TED-talk of the Month duration 5 minutes

Early this morning, when I should have been getting out of bed to go and feed the horses, the -3°C reading on the thermometer and crackling frost on the fields was so discouraging that I resisted my coffee cravings to watch one more TED talk: Rahaf Harfoush’s talk “Burnout makes us less creative. “

I am in the process of creating an online course called Burnout to Breakthrough/Road Map to Resilience, so I read everything I can lay my hands on about “burnout.” I actually hadn’t thought about the effect that burnout has on our creativity, but I should have because the more creative we are, the greater our ability to problem-solve. I reflected on my own experience and realised just how detrimental an effect burnout has on my own creativity – when I am stressed, I write to reduce stress, but burnout gives me complete writer’s block.

I thought I would share this talk with you here. It’s excellent, if you have 5 minutes, I recommend you watch it. Twice, if you have time, it makes so much sense. According to Rahaf Harfoush, a digital anthropologist (that sounds like an amazing job,) “Our obsession with productivity — to-do lists, life hacks, morning routines — is making us less productive. We need to redesign our workday around creativity – not just efficiency. She says the average American takes only half of their allocated leave…

Burnout Inhibits Creativity: When Your Inner Fire Burns Out, So Does Your Spark

Table of Contents

Burnout doesn’t just make you tired—it murders your creativity, strangles your innovation, and leaves you staring at blank pages, wondering where your brilliance went. As a medical doctor who’s been there, survived it, and now guides others through it on Camino retreats, I’m sharing why your brain stops producing when you’re running on fumes, and more importantly, how to get your creative mojo back. If you’ve ever felt like a shell of your former imaginative self, keep reading.

5 Key Takeaways

Burnout literally rewires your brain’s creative centres: Chronic stress shrinks the prefrontal cortex (your innovation hub) whilst enlarging the amygdala (your fear centre). You’re not lazy—you’re neurologically compromised.
Rest isn’t optional; it’s the prerequisite for creativity: Your best ideas don’t come from pushing harder—they emerge in the spaces between effort. Walking, silence, and doing “nothing” are actually doing everything.
Storytelling rewires burnt-out brains: Sharing narratives in safe circles activates different neural pathways than analytical thinking, offering your exhausted executive functions a genuine break whilst reconnecting you to meaning.
Physical movement unlocks mental movement: Rhythmic walking (especially pilgrimage-style) synchronises both brain hemispheres, creating the conditions where creative insights spontaneously arise.
Community heals what isolation destroyed: Burnout thrives in loneliness. Creativity flourishes in connection. You cannot think your way out of burnout—you must walk, talk, and feel your way through it with others.

Introduction: Empty is Expensive

Burnout doesn’t just steal your energy. It pickpockets your imagination, burgles your curiosity, and leaves you holding an empty bag where your creativity used to live.

I know because I’ve lived it. As a medical doctor, I spent years believing that exhaustion was simply the price of excellence, that running on empty was a badge of honour, and that my worth was measured in productivity. Then one morning, I sat down to write a simple patient letter and couldn’t find the words. Not medical jargon—I had plenty of that. But the connecting tissue, the creative phrasing, the human touch that makes medicine an art as much as a science? Gone.

That’s when I realised: burnout doesn’t just dim your light. It fundamentally alters how your brain processes possibility itself.

The relationship between burnout and creativity isn’t just correlation—it’s causation. When your nervous system is perpetually flooded with cortisol, when your prefrontal cortex is starved of resources because your amygdala is screaming danger signals, when every ounce of cognitive energy is devoted to simply surviving the next email, the next meeting, the next demand… there’s nothing left for imagination.

Creativity requires spaciousness. Burnout is the ultimate space invader.

But here’s the good news I discovered walking the Camino de Santiago: creativity isn’t dead. It’s dormant. And with the right conditions—movement, community, story, and rest—it comes roaring back to life.

Tina’s Story: The Marketing Director Who Lost Her Spark

Tina Pyper arrived at a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreat carrying a leather portfolio she never opened and a smartphone she checked every seven minutes. Her fingers twitched constantly, as though typing invisible emails on invisible keyboards. When I asked what brought her to the Camino, she laughed—a brittle, humourless sound like ice cracking.

“I used to be brilliant,” she said, staring at the limestone path stretching ahead. “Now I’m just… functional.”

Tina had spent fifteen years building her reputation as the creative director everyone wanted on their team. The woman who could walk into a room and spin three campaign concepts before coffee arrived. Who dreamed in metaphors and saw connections nobody else noticed. Who made clients weep with the beauty of her brand stories.

Then came the promotion. More responsibility, more budget, more visibility. And with it, more meetings, more stakeholders, more nights working until 2 AM because someone in New York had “just one quick question.” More mornings waking with her heart already racing, mentally triaging the day’s disasters before her feet touched the floor.

The first sign was small: she stopped noticing things. The way autumn light slanted through her office window. The smell of rain on hot pavement. The particular green of new leaves in spring. Details that used to spark ideas now barely registered. Her world had narrowed to screens and deadlines.

Then the ideas stopped coming. She’d sit in brainstorming sessions, her team looking at her expectantly, and find… nothing. Just a vast, echoing blankness where her imagination used to live. She’d panic, reach for old formulas, and regurgitate what worked last year. Nobody complained—her execution was still flawless. But Tina knew. The magic was gone.

“I felt like a fraud,” she told me on our second day walking, her voice barely audible above the crunch of gravel beneath our boots. “Like everyone would eventually realise I was empty inside. Just going through the motions.”

On the third morning, during our storytelling circle, I asked each person to share a childhood memory—nothing work-related, no lessons, just pure recollection. The group sat in the dappled shade of an ancient oak, and when Tina’s turn came, she hesitated so long I thought she might refuse.

Then she began: “I was seven. My grandmother had this garden…”

Her voice changed as she spoke—softened, warmed, came alive. She described the weight of tomatoes in her small palms, sun-warm and heavy. The sharp, green smell of tomato leaves that stuck to her fingers. Her grandmother’s soil-stained hands guiding hers, teaching her to pinch off suckers. The taste of cherry tomatoes eaten straight from the vine, still hot from the sun, bursting sweet and acid on her tongue.

As she spoke, I watched the others lean forward. Watched their faces soften. And I watched something shift in Tina’s eyes—a light flickering back on after a long darkness.

“I’d forgotten,” she whispered when she finished. “I’d completely forgotten how that felt. How alive everything was.”

That evening, she borrowed paper from my notebook. Not to make lists or plans—she’d been doing that compulsively since arrival—but to write. Just to see what came. She sat on a stone wall overlooking the valley as the sun set, and her hand moved across the page in a way I recognised: the unselfconscious flow of someone reconnecting with a lost part of themselves.

Later, in our final storytelling circle, she shared what she’d written: a piece about gardens and grandmothers and the particular quality of light through tomato leaves. It wasn’t marketing copy. It wasn’t strategic or targeted or optimised for anything. It was simply beautiful. Several people cried.

“I thought creativity was something I did,” Tina said, her eyes bright with tears and laughter both. “But it’s something I am. I just needed to remember how to be quiet enough to hear it again.”

She left the retreat with her portfolio still unopened and her phone notifications permanently silenced. Six months later, she sent me a message: she’d taken a sabbatical, was consulting part-time, and had started writing again—not for clients, but for herself. “The ideas are back,” she wrote. “Better than before. Because I’m back.”

In my storytelling circles, I’ve witnessed this resurrection countless times. When we create space for people to share without agenda, without performance, without the pressure to be productive—something fundamental shifts. The stories we tell reconnect us to the stories we’re living. And in that reconnection, creativity doesn’t just return. It transforms.

The Neuroscience of Burnout and Creativity: Why Your Brain Can’t Do Both

Let’s talk about what’s actually happening in your brain when burnout and creativity collide. This isn’t woolliness—it’s biology.

Your prefrontal cortex, the sophisticated CEO of your brain, handles executive functions: planning, problem-solving, and creative thinking. It’s where innovation lives, where you make unexpected connections, where your best ideas emerge. But here’s the catch: it’s an energy hog. When resources are scarce, your brain has to make choices.

Enter burnout. Chronic stress floods your system with cortisol, triggering your amygdala—your brain’s alarm system—into overdrive. Your amygdala doesn’t care about your brilliant marketing campaign or your novel’s plot twist. It cares about survival. And when it’s screaming “danger!” your brain diverts resources away from that expensive prefrontal cortex and towards immediate threat response.

Studies using brain imaging have shown that chronic stress literally shrinks the prefrontal cortex whilst enlarging the amygdala. You’re not imagining it—your creative capacity is being structurally diminished.

But there’s more. Creativity requires what neuroscientists call the “default mode network”—the mental state you enter when you’re not focused on external tasks. It’s the wandering mind, the daydreaming state, the shower-thoughts phenomenon. This is where your brain makes those unexpected connections that feel like genius.

Burnout kills the default mode network. When you’re in constant fight-or-flight, your brain never gets to wander. You’re always on task, always vigilant, always scanning for the next threat (email, deadline, criticism). There’s no mental space for the mind to meander, to play, to stumble upon something new.

This is why forcing creativity when you’re burnt out is like trying to grow tomatoes in concrete. It’s not about willpower or discipline. Your brain literally lacks the conditions necessary for creative thought to emerge.

The Creativity-Burnout Cycle

Here’s where it gets particularly cruel: for many professionals—entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives—your creativity is your livelihood. Losing it isn’t just personally devastating; it’s professionally catastrophic. So what do you do? You work harder. You push more. You try to force the ideas to come.

Which, of course, worsens the burnout. Which further inhibits creativity. Which increases panic. Which drives you to work harder still.

I see this cycle constantly in the corporate professionals and entrepreneurs who come to my retreats. They arrive believing they need to “fix” themselves quickly so they can get back to producing. They’re treating their burnout like a software glitch—reboot and resume.

But burnout isn’t a glitch. It’s a message. Your nervous system is essentially staging an intervention, saying: “We cannot continue like this.”

Why Rest Isn’t Enough (But It’s Essential)

“Just rest” sounds simple. And yes, sleep matters enormously—the glymphatic system that clears metabolic waste from your brain works primarily during deep sleep. But here’s what I’ve learned both personally and professionally: passive rest alone doesn’t restore creativity.

You need active recovery. You need experiences that engage your senses, that connect you to something beyond your inbox, that remind your nervous system what safety and pleasure feel like.

This is where walking comes in. Rhythmic bilateral movement—the left-right, left-right of walking—has been shown to integrate both brain hemispheres and reduce amygdala activation. There’s a reason so many philosophers and writers throughout history were dedicated walkers. The physical rhythm creates a mental rhythm. Ideas don’t come from thinking harder; they emerge from the steady pace of feet on earth.

Pilgrimage-style walking—walking with intention but without rigid destination—adds another layer. You’re moving, but you’re not rushing. You’re going somewhere, but you’re fully present to where you are. This paradox is precisely what burnt-out brains need: forward momentum without pressure, purpose without performance.

The Power of Sensory Awakening

Remember Tina’s tomatoes? That wasn’t nostalgia—it was neurological rehabilitation.

Burnout narrows our sensory aperture. We stop noticing. Everything becomes instrumental—this thing to get through to reach that thing. Food becomes fuel. Walks become transportation. Conversations become transactions.

Creativity requires the opposite: a wide-open sensory engagement with the world. When you truly taste your food, feel the sun on your skin, smell the particular scent of pine after rain—you’re not just being mindful. You’re giving your prefrontal cortex novel sensory data to play with. You’re reminding your brain that the world is full of interesting inputs worth paying attention to.

In our Camino retreats, I watch this awakening happen gradually. Day one, people barely notice their surroundings—they’re too busy managing their anxiety about being away from work. By day three, someone stops the group to point out a spider’s web jewelled with dew. By day five, we’re pausing to taste wild blackberries, to press our palms against sun-warmed stone, to listen to the specific quality of birdsong at dusk.

This isn’t frivolous. This is medicine. You’re retraining your nervous system to perceive abundance instead of scarcity, wonder instead of threat. And from that shifted state, creativity doesn’t have to be forced. It simply bubbles up, natural as breathing.

Storytelling Circles: The Unexpected Antidote

One of the most powerful tools I’ve discovered for healing burnout and restoring creativity is also one of the oldest: storytelling in community.

In my storytelling circles, there’s no agenda. No workshopping. No critique. Just humans sharing stories and other humans listening intently. It’s deceptively simple. And profoundly transformative.

Here’s why it works: storytelling engages completely different neural pathways than the analytical, problem-solving thinking that dominates most professional environments. When you tell a story, you’re not in your prefrontal cortex trying to optimise and strategise. You’re in a more embodied, emotional, intuitive space.

Moreover, storytelling is fundamentally creative. Even if you’re sharing something that “really happened,” you’re making creative choices: where to begin, which details matter, how to convey emotion, what the story means. You’re exercising your creativity without the pressure of it having to be “useful.”

And here’s the magic: when you tell your story and someone truly listens—not to respond, not to fix, but simply to receive—something in you relaxes. You remember that you matter beyond your productivity. That your experiences have value beyond their professional utility. That you are interesting simply because you are human.

For women especially—and I see this repeatedly in my circles—this permission to take up space, to be heard without having to prove value, to share without apologising, is revolutionary. So many professional women have internalised the message that their worth equals their output. Storytelling circles disrupt that equation.

One member of my circles, Sarah, shared this insight: “For the first time in years, I experienced something without immediately thinking about how to monetise it or what it could teach me. I just… experienced it. And then I shared it. And people cared. Not because it was useful. Because it was true.”

That shift—from instrumental to intrinsic, from performing to being—is where creativity lives.

Your Body Keeps the Score

There’s a reason burnout recovery requires physical intervention, not just cognitive reframing. Your body has kept meticulous records of every threat, every stressor, every time you overrode your needs for productivity. Those records are stored in your nervous system, your muscles, your fascia.

You cannot think your way out of burnout because burnout isn’t just a thought problem. It’s a whole-body experience of depletion and dysregulation.

This is why our Camino retreats combine walking with mindfulness and meditation practices specifically designed for stress management. We’re not trying to relax your mind whilst your body remains clenched. We’re helping your entire nervous system recalibrate.

The walking provides bilateral stimulation and rhythmic regulation. The mindfulness practices teach interoception—the ability to notice and interpret bodily signals. The meditation cultivates the parasympathetic “rest and digest” response. Together, they create the conditions for genuine recovery.

And here’s what happens when your nervous system finally feels safe: creativity returns. Not as something you have to chase, but as something that simply emerges. Ideas arise on the walk. Insights appear during meditation. Connections spark in conversation.

Because creativity was never gone. It was just waiting for you to come home to yourself.

Real Voices: Testimonials from the Path

From a First-Time Camino Walker

“I came to Dr Montagu’s Crossroads Retreat in pieces. I’d spent three years building my startup, convinced that burnout was just weakness I needed to push through. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an original idea—I was just recycling the same strategies, hoping something would stick. The concept that I needed to stop working to start creating again felt dangerous, even irresponsible.

Walking the Camino changed everything. Not instantly—I spent the first two days mentally composing emails I couldn’t send. But something about the rhythm of walking, the mindfulness practices, the complete absence of wifi and demands… my brain finally exhaled. By day four, I was noticing things: bird patterns, stone walls, the way light moved through leaves. By day six, I was having ideas again. Not forced, not strained. They just… appeared.

The mindfulness and meditation exercises Dr Montagu taught us weren’t fluffy nonsense—they were practical tools for regulating my nervous system. And the storytelling circles showed me that I’d become so focused on strategic messaging I’d forgotten how to simply share a human experience. I left with more than rest. I left with a completely different relationship to my work, my creativity, and my worth as a human beyond what I produce.

Six months later, I’m still walking every morning. My business is thriving—not because I’m working harder, but because I’m finally creative again.” — Emma R., Tech Entrepreneur

From a Storytelling Circle Member

“Joining Dr Montagu’s storytelling circle was terrifying. I’d never travelled alone before, never put myself in a space where I had to speak without a professional reason. As a corporate consultant, I was used to having all the answers, being the expert in the room. The idea of just… sharing a personal story with strangers? Vulnerable doesn’t begin to describe it.

But that vulnerability was exactly what I needed. In the circle, nobody wanted my expertise. They just wanted me. My actual experiences, my real reactions, my honest struggles. For the first time in my professional life, I wasn’t performing. I was just being.

What surprised me was how this transformed my confidence about travelling alone. When you’ve sat in a circle and shared something true and been met with genuine attention and care—not judgement, not critique, just presence—something shifts. You realise you’re not as fragile as you thought. That connection is possible even with strangers. That you have intrinsic worth beyond your utility.

Now I travel alone regularly. And I’ve started writing again—not reports, but actual creative writing. The circle didn’t just help me overcome travel anxiety. It helped me remember I’m more than my job title. That the stories I have to tell matter simply because they’re mine.” — Patricia L., Strategy Consultant

FAQs: Your Burning Questions Answered

Q: Can’t I just take a holiday and recover from burnout that way?

No, and here’s why: burnout isn’t simple exhaustion that resets with time off. It’s a profound dysregulation of your nervous system that requires active intervention. A typical holiday—especially one where you’re still checking emails, planning the itinerary, managing logistics—keeps you in the same hypervigilant state. Recovery requires experiences that fundamentally shift your nervous system from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) activation. The combination of pilgrimage-style walking, mindfulness practices, storytelling, and genuine disconnection creates conditions a beach holiday simply cannot.

Q: How do I know if I’m burnt out or just tired?

Fatigue responds to rest. Burnout doesn’t. If you’re burnt out, you’ll notice: emotional exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix, cynicism or detachment from work you once cared about, reduced sense of accomplishment despite working harder, inability to concentrate or create, physical symptoms like insomnia or tension, and feeling trapped with no way out. Most tellingly, if creative tasks that used to energise you now feel impossible, you’re likely beyond simple tiredness into genuine burnout territory.

Q: I can’t afford to take time off work. What then?

I understand this fear intimately—I felt it myself as a doctor. But here’s the harder truth: if you don’t take time off to recover now, burnout will eventually take the choice away from you through illness, breakdown, or such profound performance decline you’re forced to stop. Burnout is expensive—to your health, your relationships, your career longevity, and yes, your creativity. The question isn’t whether you can afford time off; it’s whether you can afford not to recover. Even a long weekend retreat can provide the reset that prevents months of dysfunction.

Q: Does walking really make that much difference to creativity?

Yes, and the research backs this up. Stanford University studies found that walking increases creative output by an average of 60%. The bilateral movement synchronises both brain hemispheres, reduces amygdala activation, and allows the default mode network to engage—precisely the conditions creativity requires. But not all walking is equal: walking in nature, at a comfortable pace, without screens or podcasts, provides maximum benefit. The Camino’s pilgrimage context adds another dimension: you’re walking with intention but without the pressure of productivity, which is exactly the paradox burnt-out brains need.

Q: I’m not naturally creative. Is this still relevant to me?

Absolutely. Creativity isn’t just for artists—it’s fundamental to problem-solving, strategic thinking, relationship-building, and finding meaning in your life. If you’re an entrepreneur, you need creativity to innovate and adapt. If you’re a leader, you need it to inspire and navigate complexity. And as a human, you need it to craft a life worth living. Burnout steals creativity from everyone, regardless of job title. And everyone, regardless of profession, deserves to get it back.

Conclusion: The Fire You Tend, Not the One You Smother

Burnout doesn’t just inhibit creativity—it fundamentally severs your connection to the part of yourself that imagines, innovates, and dreams. But here’s what I’ve learned from walking hundreds of kilometres on the Camino, from sharing stories in circles, from guiding others through recovery, and from my own journey back from the edge: creativity isn’t something you lost. It’s something that’s been waiting, patiently, for you to create the conditions where it can return.

You cannot force creativity any more than you can force a seed to grow by shouting at it. But you can tend the soil. You can provide water, sunlight, and space. You can remove the rocks choking its roots. You can wait, with faith, for the green shoots to emerge.

That’s what genuine recovery from burnout looks like: not a quick fix, but a fundamental reorientation towards what makes you human. Rest, yes. But also movement. Connection. Story. Sensation. Beauty. The permission to exist beyond your productivity.

Your creativity isn’t gone. It’s dormant. And winter, as any gardener knows, is not death—it’s preparation for spring.

The fire that creates, that imagines, that makes meaning from chaos? It’s still in you. It’s just waiting for you to stop adding fuel to the wrong flames—the flames of pressure, perfectionism, and endless productivity—and instead tend the quiet ember of your essential self.

That ember is enough. Given the right conditions, it will become a blaze again.

But first, you must stop. You must walk. You must remember. You must come home to yourself.

And then? Then the creating thing happens on its own.

Begin Your Journey Back to Yourself

If these words resonated in your chest like a bell that’s been silent too long, perhaps it’s time to consider something radical: actually stopping.

Not collapsing. Not failing. Stopping with intention.

My Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreats in the beautiful south-west of France aren’t your typical hiking holidays. They’re carefully designed recovery experiences for burnt-out professionals and entrepreneurs who’ve forgotten they’re human beings, not human doings.

Picture this: walking ancient pilgrimage paths through landscapes that have witnessed countless journeys of transformation. Not the full Camino—these are carefully curated sections chosen for their beauty, significance, and capacity to restore. The rolling hills of Gers, the medieval villages where time moves differently, the paths through oak forests where the only sound is your footsteps and birdsong.

Each day combines mindful walking with meditation and mindfulness practices specifically designed for stress management—not the kind that feels like another task on your to-do list, but embodied practices that help your nervous system remember what safety feels like. We move slowly enough to actually notice things: the quality of light, the scent of wild herbs, the feeling of your feet on earth.

In our evening storytelling circles, you’ll discover what happens when you share your experience without having to prove anything, fix anything, or turn it into a professional development opportunity. Just stories. Just listening. Just the profound recognition that your life—exactly as it is, with all its contradictions and complexities—matters.

These retreats are small by design. Intimate enough that you’re genuinely seen, large enough that you’re not carrying the social weight of one-on-one intensity. You’ll walk with others who understand what it means to have given everything to your work and found yourself empty. And you’ll discover that you’re not alone in this—not in the struggle, and not in the journey back.

The south-west of France offers spaciousness. The villages are quiet. The paths are uncrowded. The pace of life itself is different here—slower, richer, more sensual. The food is extraordinary (because recovery also requires pleasure). The sunlight has a particular golden quality that makes everything feel like a painting.

But more than the location or the practices, what makes these retreats transformative is this: they’re led by someone who’s been where you are. I understand the particular exhaustion of high-functioning professionals. I know what it’s like to believe rest is weakness and pushing through is strength. I’ve experienced firsthand what happens when your body finally forces you to stop. And I’ve found my way back—not to who I was before, but to someone more whole, more creative, more alive.

You don’t need to walk the full Camino to experience transformation. You just need to begin. To take a few days away from the noise and remember what your own voice sounds like. To walk without destination and discover that you have everything you need already within you.

Your stories matter.

10 Powerful Life Lessons Learned While Walking the Camino de Santiago – a free guide filled with 10 not just “quaint anecdotes” or Instagram-worthy moments (though there are plenty of those) but real transformations from real people who walked the same insight-giving trail you might want to walk one day – Subscribe to my monthly newsletter to Download the Guide

The Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreat

“I am an experienced medical doctor – MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract cert, Transformational Life Coach (dip.) Life Story Coach (cert.) Stress Counselling (cert.) Med Hypnotherapy (dip.) and EAGALA (cert.) I may have an impressive number of letters after my name, and more than three decades of professional experience, but what qualifies me to excel at what I do is my intuitive understanding of my clients’ difficulties and my extensive personal experience of managing major life changes using strategies I developed over many years.” Dr M Montagu

Burnout Destroys Creativity