‘Face a bigger problem’: Korean artist gives tips to beat burnout

MANILA, Philippines — Feeling tired, stressed or drained all the time?

You must be experiencing some signs of burnout, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“We have frequent burnouts,” Korean artist Cho Hye-seung spoke in behalf of other colleagues in the webtoon industry at the recent opening of “K-Comics World Tour” exhibit in The M (Metropolitan Museum) in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

“Because of the characteristic of our job, you know, we have to upload this story once a week and there is actually a very minimal time for you to think of your mistakes or make improvements. So when you actually conquer those periods, you actually get to burnout and there are actually two solutions to resolve your burnouts,” she said in Korean, as translated into English by an interpreter.

“One is to take ample rest and second is to face a bigger problem,” she quipped.

“When it comes to the teenagers or the youth these days, especially in Korea, they actually express their depressions or their like, discriminations or such… but when it comes to a country experiencing like war, you know, in recent days, you know, they do not have those kinds of emotional diseases or they do not cry out for those kind of emotional health, right? Because they're in war, right? But whenever you work in a medium-size company that has to draw once a week, you will feel like you're at war,” she explained.

Whenever she feels burnout, she motivates herself by reminding herself that she needs to finish the job to earn.

“Whenever I have a burnout, there's another side of me, you know, hitting this burnout self to, ‘You have to get up, you have to earn money.’ You know, those kind of lines that are popular in those kind of dramas,” she shared. “You know, it actually reminds me, to actually get myself up and to move on from this burnout.”

Another thing that she does when having a burnout is to take a break from her work and exercise. 

“What I actually do is that, because burnout is not just your mental issues, but also your physical issues. Sometimes you actually lack your physical (exercise). So what I actually do is that I just do not just lay in bed and just stare at the ceiling, but I actually do