There’s a peculiar paradox that many of us in creative professions face: we spend our days generating ideas, designing content, and building campaigns for clients or employers, yet somehow our personal creative wells often run dry. By the time we clock out, the thought of embarking on yet another creative endeavor can feel exhausting rather than energizing.

But what if that personal side project isn’t just a luxury—but a necessity for our professional longevity and mental wellbeing?

The Wisdom of Puppet Masters

Years ago, legendary Muppet performer Jerry Nelson (the talent behind Count von Count, Snuffleupagus, and countless other beloved characters) offered a piece of advice to his colleagues that has stuck with me. He told fellow performers, including Matt Vogel (who would later become Kermit the Frog’s performer), to always maintain a creative project that was entirely their own.

For Nelson, it was music. Despite his demanding schedule bringing puppets to life, he carved out time to write songs, play instruments, and eventually recorded his own album. This wasn’t just a hobby—it was a lifeline to his authentic creative voice.

When Your Creativity Belongs to Others

Those of us who create for a living understand the unique strain of having our creative output directed, evaluated, and often altered by others. Whether you’re designing websites, writing marketing copy, producing videos, or managing social media accounts, your creative decisions are ultimately shaped by business goals, client preferences, and audience metrics.

This is the job, of course. We’re paid to align our creative abilities with specific objectives. But this arrangement exacts a toll that’s rarely discussed: the slow erosion of your personal creative identity.

The Restoration Power of Personal Projects

This is precisely why personal creative projects aren’t merely indulgent side activities—they’re essential practices for professional sustainability. Here’s what they offer that your day job simply cannot:

1. Freedom from External Judgment

When you create solely for yourself, you temporarily step outside the evaluation matrix. There are no likes to count, no client feedback sessions, no ROI to measure. This freedom allows you to reconnect with the pure joy of creation that likely drew you to your field in the first place.

2. Permission to Fail Gloriously

Personal projects create safe spaces to take risks that might be unthinkable in professional contexts. That experimental approach, that weird tangent, that technique you’ve never tried—all become possible when the stakes are lowered. And here’s the secret: these “experimental laboratories” often yield innovations that eventually enhance your professional work.

3. Skill Expansion Beyond Job Requirements

The graphic designer who writes poetry, the copywriter who photographs landscapes, the video producer who composes music—cross-disciplinary creativity builds neural pathways that enhance problem-solving across all creative endeavors. Your seemingly unrelated personal project might be secretly training you to think differently about your professional challenges.

4. Reclaiming Your Creative Voice

When your creative decisions are consistently influenced by external factors, you can lose touch with your authentic creative instincts. Personal projects reconnect you with that inner compass—reminding you of the themes, styles, and approaches that resonate most deeply with you as an individual creator.

5. Mental Health Protection

Perhaps most importantly, personal creative projects provide crucial psychological benefits. Research consistently shows that creative expression reduces stress, improves mood, and enhances overall wellbeing. For creative professionals, this offers a powerful counterbalance to the pressures of commercial creativity.

Finding Your “Jerry Nelson Project”

So what might your equivalent of Jerry Nelson’s music be? The key is choosing something that feels distinctly different from your professional output, while still engaging your creative faculties. Perhaps it’s:

• Writing fiction when your days are filled with marketing copy
• Creating abstract paintings when you typically design within strict brand guidelines
• Building furniture when you spend hours in digital design
• Cooking experimental recipes when your creativity is usually verbal
• Growing a garden when your professional creativity happens on screens

The medium matters less than the mindset: this is creation without commercial pressure, exploration without deadlines, expression without metrics.

Making It Sustainable

The biggest challenge for busy creative professionals isn’t finding a personal creative outlet—it’s sustaining it amid packed schedules. A few approaches that work:

Schedule it like any other commitment. Even if it’s just 30 minutes twice a week, protecting this time signals to yourself that your creative development matters.

Embrace imperfection and small steps. Your personal project doesn’t need the polish of your professional work. Quick sketches, rough drafts, and experiments count.

Find community, not audience. Consider connecting with others pursuing similar personal projects—not for evaluation but for mutual encouragement and accountability.

Remember the professional benefits. When motivation wanes, remind yourself that this “separate” creative practice is actually making you better at your day job by keeping your creative thinking flexible and resilient.

The Return on Investment

While the primary value of personal creative projects is intrinsic, there are often unexpected professional benefits. Many creative professionals find that their side projects eventually:

• Lead to new professional opportunities in adjacent fields
• Attract clients who appreciate their distinctive creative perspective
• Develop into viable secondary income streams
• Generate content for professional portfolios that stands out from more conventional work
• Prevent burnout by sustaining passion for creative work generally

Permission to Create for Creation’s Sake

In our productivity-obsessed culture, we often feel the need to justify creative activities by their outcomes. But perhaps the most radical aspect of personal creative projects is embracing creation for its own sake—not as a means to an end, but as a vital human experience.

Jerry Nelson didn’t make music primarily to become a recording artist or to enhance his puppeteering. He did it because making music was essential to his sense of self. The professional benefits were secondary to the primary purpose: connecting with his own creative voice.

As creative professionals who produce work to meet others’ needs all day, giving ourselves permission to create without purpose might be the most purposeful thing we do. It’s not just self-care—it’s self-preservation in fields where creative burnout is an occupational hazard.

What will your project be? Whatever you choose, know that in nurturing your personal creative practice, you’re not just indulging a hobby—you’re sustaining the very resource that makes your professional contribution possible: your unique creative spirit.