Megan Ihnen on Burnout, Creative Sparks, and 20-Year Plans
On February 26, I spoke to Megan Ihnen about burnout, identifying new projects, and moving toward long-term goals. Megan talks about how sometimes burnout stems from ignoring a desire to try something new. In other words, when we don’t heed a creative spark, we risk that spark dying out. I love how she reframes burnout as a call to action: a chance to reimagine our future when our current work no longer aligns with our ever-evolving desires.
Read on for the twenty-year goal-setting exercise Megan uses with her coaching clients and her suggestions for how to request more time to work on a project when you need it.
Dale Trumbore: I think of you as having strategies and a framework, or multiple frameworks, for burnout. Can you talk about those?
Megan Ihnen: I had a bout of burnout around 2017 and wrote about it pretty publicly. What I've come to understand is that burnout, at least for me, has a very specific trigger: it tends to show up in the gap between visions. The artist part of me is continually evolving, always wanting to try new things. But the systems-and-structure side of me follows a pattern, and my brain and body are usually telling me something new is calling way before I'm consciously ready to acknowledge it.
When you're being called to try something new, you have to go back to beginner's mind and put yourself out there. Burnout, in my experience, comes from the conflict of still working the old program while not giving enough time, energy, or attention to the next vision. I can be very good at deluding myself—“Don't look at the new vision; we're not there yet”—or convincing myself that the new thing is just a variation on what I'm already doing, rather than something that requires genuinely new skills or resources.
As artists, one of the most important things to remember is: if a vision is calling you, you have to pay attention to it. Otherwise, that's how your creative spark starts to die.
Dale Trumbore: We’ve worked together in coaching sessions, and I remember telling you about feeling pulled towards creative writing. I was feeling insecure about it, and I asked you, “Should I be using a pen name?” And you were like, no, it’s all part of you. That’s what it is to be an artist: you’re embracing all these different parts of yourself.
I’m wondering if you could talk about what I see as a big problem regarding burnout for artists, which is that some of us rely on what we do for income, socializing, and joy. I derive part of my sanity from composing and music-making, so taking a step back can be really scary. How do we reckon with that?
Megan Ihnen: That's exactly why I make all my clients do the twenty-year goal exercise [mentioned in Megan’s article]. To give some context: we look twenty years into the future and think about ourselves holistically: health, family, spiritual life, professional life. We start with the most audacious version of who we want to be, and then reverse-engineer backward: ten years, five years, two years, and finally quarterly goals with real metrics and day-to-day activities.
What I've found is that when people are truly anchored to a long-term vision, prioritization becomes so much faster. You stop waffling—"Is this moving me toward my purpose?"—because you actually know. But here's the thing that always happens: when I ask clients to tell me their twenty-year goal in a way that gets their body or emotions involved—“Does it make your heart flutter? Do tears come to your eyes?”—that's when it stops being an exercise and becomes real. And then they say, "Oh no. Now I have to actually do this."
Having that clarity also tells you what you can afford to step back from. If your creative work is load-bearing in four directions, you need to know which of those directions is the foundation and which ones you've been treating as the foundation when they aren't.
Interviewing Megan on February 28, 2026.
The interview below has been edited and condensed.
Dale Trumbore: Right—if you have that bigger sense of purpose, that makes it really easy to do a lot of this work, but when that’s lacking, it’s really easy to veer into burnout.
What are your thoughts about burnout in the short-term? I keep thinking about the similarities with depression. When I’m feeling depressed, it’s very hard to remember a time when I wasn’t depressed and figure out the next right action. With burnout, sometimes I recognize the symptoms first. It’s like what you were saying: the body knows. So what about on a day-to-day basis, when you can’t see the twenty-year vision—you can’t even see the month-long vision?
Megan Ihnen: First—and I don't want to skip past this—stay alive. That's step one. Full stop.
Dale Trumbore: That's so important to name. I briefly volunteered with Crisis Text Line, where you can text in if you're feeling depressed or in any other form of crisis. [Text HOME to 741741.] In the training, they emphasize that talking about dark feelings doesn't make people have more of them. In fact, it's the opposite.
Megan Ihnen: When you're at the bottom of the curve, there are seemingly a hundred things in your life that feel impossible to get out of: commitments, collaborations, deadlines. What I'd encourage people to do is reach out to the people you're working with before things fall apart. You don't have to explain everything. You can say: “I'm in a really difficult season, and I'd like to explore moving this collaboration to another time so I can be my most present self for what we're trying to do together.”
You're not asking them to absorb your whole situation. You're asking them to work with you toward the best possible outcome for both of you. “I'm concerned I'm not going to be able to meet this deadline. Can we explore other options?” I would so much rather someone reach out, try to preserve the relationship, and ask for a little space than put a collaborator in the position of not having a piece they thought was going to be on a concert.
I wish I could promise that proactive communication means nothing bad ever happens and nobody's ever upset. I know that's not true. But our health matters, and as a singer, I feel this particularly intensely. My body is my instrument. If I'm treating it poorly because of my mental state, that's not going to serve me or anyone I'm working with.
Dale Trumbore: I think you put that beautifully. You have to let your collaborators know that you need space and grace, but you don’t have to go into the specifics. “It’s a difficult season for me”—that sums it up.
To wrap up with something positive: What are you excited about right now?
Megan Ihnen: Neonautica—my duo with saxophonist and composer Alan Theisen—is heading to Heidelberg University for their new music festival. As a band, we've grown into this EDM dimension I genuinely did not see coming. I'm doing a lot more of my own music creation and composition now, and I have a lot of beginner's mind about it. Ten years ago it wasn't on the vision board. But when it started opening up, I had to be honest: I actually really want this, even though I have to build skills in that area.
I'm also getting to sing at New Music on the Bayou in June. And the third and final Sleep Songs album is slowly, slowly coming together. It is the slowest project I have ever done in my life. I commissioned all these pieces thinking they'd be wordless lullabies, about two minutes each, and I'd just put them on SoundCloud. And then they became produced albums. I've learned so much about myself in the process, and I'm genuinely grateful.
Dale Trumbore: There’s something really special about projects that do take years to complete; you learn from them in a way that you don’t from shorter projects. I know they feel hard in the moment, and I struggle with that. But in my experience, those are the projects in which I’ve learned the most about myself. It’s always worth it.
Megan Ihnen: It really is. This is yours, and you have to nurture it all the way to the end.
