Found an interesting post on Mark McGuinness's blog Wishful Thinking entitled 'Is burnout inevitable in the creative industries?'

The article deals mainly with the gaming industry, based on a Quality of Life survey conducted by Develop magazine, but I think the issues raised are pertinent to creative businesses in general.

The survey results say:

• 85% have to work ‘crunch’ – periods of intensive overtime before deadlines
• 60% have to work over 10 hours overtime a week during crunch — some as many as 25 to 30 hours per week
• 60% feel that they work too much
• 65% say that working crunch has impacted their health
• 98% of respondents are not paid for the overtime they work

I guess that these numbers would be no surprise to most people working in advertising. In fact, the concept of 'overtime' doesn't really exist in our business. And, to be honest, the stats would be no surprise to Wieden + Kennedy folks, who have been working extraordinarily hard this year.

McGuinness comments, "Several of the survey respondents suggested that ‘crunch’ is
normal and inevitable, not just in computer gaming, but in any creative
industry:

Crunch seems to just be accepted as ‘the norm in
creative industries’ — this attitude will only prolong the myth that it
aids productivity…Fundamentally I’m in the entertainment business, and a bit of pain is the norm in these…In a milestone-oriented environment this is inevitable. It’s no
different to film and TV, where creativity is integral to the product
and boundaries are pushed."

The gaming industry is apparently notorious for this last-minute binge-working and the term 'crunch' has been coined in that business to describe it. In the many years I've spent in advertising, this has always been a business in which late nights and weekend working have been generally accepted as part of the way that things are done. High-pressure new business pitches on top of day-to-day work, tight production schedules, and big set-piece presentations tend to result in our own late-night, last-minute crunch working.

It feels as though the current environment, when agencies need to do more, quicker, across vastly more complex and differentiated media and technology channels, is making the situation worse not better. However much time we have to do a job and however well we try to
plan the resource, we always have that ‘crunch’ as deadlines
approach and the team works late nights and weekends to get it done.
There's no question sometimes clients need us to turn things around very fast and that sometimes our own
mismanagement of resource means we waste some of the time we have. But I also wonder ( I may be treading on thin ice here) whether it’s in the nature of some creative people not to
plan their time and prioritise their tasks.

Just to be clear – I'm not suggesting that the work pressures we are under, the long hours and the stress are all the fault of ill-disciplined creatives.

I'm just thinking that there are people who
methodically assign time to jobs to ensure that work is completed
within deadline (the kind of people who
planned their revision schedule in advance for the school term so they didn’t need
to pull all-nighters when the exams arrived) but those people tend to
become account managers and producers, not creatives. Maybe the
psychological make-up of the folks who can think laterally and make
crazy, intuitive leaps is just fundamentally at odds with the
imposition of structure and process. Some of our most brilliant
creatives are the ones who are worst at managing deadlines. Of course maybe they know they're doing it, and do it mischievously to drive us anal manager-types crazy.

Perhaps,
whatever systems are put in place, there will always be a tension
between the managers who try to schedule work and the creatives who
resist process and reject structure. And of course creative perfectionists will never have enough time to finish the work to the standard they would ideally like. (I can remember Paul Belford working nights in the studio at TBWA continuing to craft and polish layouts for a print campaign that had not only already been approved and supplied but had already finished.)

I’m no psychologist, so this theory could be rubbish. What do readers think?

Are most creative people resistant to structure and reluctant to organise and prioritise their work, meaning that they're finally forced to deliver when the gun of the client's deadline is at their head?

If you're a creative reading this, do you disagree with my generalisation about your approach to deadlines?

Is last-minute binge-working inevitable in the ad business or can we avoid it with better management?

Should ad agencies pay for overtime? (Or would that just encourage people to crunch-work and reward them for it?)