Burning ourselves out is Burning the Planet out.

Time off won’t fix it, it’s time to change the systems to support, rejuvenate and regenerate.

We are burning ourselves out and as a result burning the planet out.  Headlines on burnout have popped up more and more in the past year as we collectively navigated through the pandemic. Many large companies, the tech industry, and trendy apps have made headlines giving employees a week off to recover from burnout.  But the thing is, you don’t recover by taking time off and going right back to the same routine.  That actually just insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Taking time off for yourself and promoting mental health is incredibly valuable.  But the real cure for burnout is not time off, or taking a nap, but changing the underlying systems to give you support, to rejuvenate you, to regenerate your energy.  It’s the same reason why we can’t just pack up and go live on Mars, or the Moon expecting to create a more sustainable lifestyle - if we put in place our same habits, our same behaviors, our same systems - we’re just going to repeat the same mistakes that we’ve made here.  Right now we are at a pivotal time, as collectively we re-emerge from the multiple global pandemics.  When the world shut down and we sheltered in place we saw floods of social media memes telling us we couldn’t go back to the status quo, this was the world's way of taking a nap, that it was time to reimagine - but did we? Or did we just schedule more back to back zoom meetings?

Often while spinning wheels, trying to keep us going, we respond reactively instead of proactively.  We are too busy putting out fires and creating band-aid fixes to keep things moving along.  The personal burnout we feel as individuals, the collective burnout we feel as a society, and the burnout our planet is feeling in the climate crisis - is because we’ve designed systems and structures that don’t support us and won’t sustain us; the band aid fixes have worn off and they’re crumbling down.  A new paint job isn’t going to fix cracks in a foundation on a building that didn’t have enough rebar in it to begin with.  Unfortunately there is no quick fix.  For designers, this is a difficult thing.  We live in a society that rewards fast, trendy, sexy designs.  We want solutions (and stuff!) that can be delivered to our door in 2 hours with a click of a button.  But pretty gradients with big type, buzz wordy slogans and promotional swag aren’t helping the big picture.  It’s time to stop designing stuff, and instead redesign our underlying systems, structures and goals to be restorative and regenerative.  

On a personal level, as we look to combat our own individual burn out - sometimes binge watching Netflix feels good in the moment, but it doesn’t always give us more energy.  Instead we need activities that regenerate, rejuvenate us, that leave us better, more energetic.  This looks different to everyone. Maybe this is cooking, exercising, gardening, painting, swimming, talking with a friend, singing, whatever makes you fulfilled and restores you.  Our collectives need the same type of care - building and regenerating community, improving collective spaces, investing in each other whether that's public green spaces, local businesses, community organizations, schools or your next door neighbor.  We need to think of our designs the same way.  How can we design products, tools, systems, interactions and communities that create more energy?  When we compost food, it makes the soil richer and full of more nutrients.  Regenerative brakes in electric cars create electricity for slowing down. It’s too late for us to keep talking about sustainable design, and we know our current state is not sustainable.  As designers, as people, we need to move to thinking about how everything we do and make can regenerate ourselves, our collective, and our planet.  

The relationship between self and others, internal and external is the central theme to Integral Theory.  

Described as the four quadrants integral theory aims to harmonize all four: 

• Individual/ Interior: I - our thoughts, emotions, memories, things individual to our own minds 

• Collective/ Interior : We - share values and meanings, languages, relationships, cultural understandings 

• Individual/ Exterior: It - our material bodies, our individual behaviors and actions, what we can see and touch

• Collective/ Exterior: Its - our constructed social environments: networks, technology, governments

To solve for our individual and collective burnout of ourselves and the planet, we must design in and design for the connection between all quadrants.  This is why it’s about more than changing your own attitude or taking a nap.  It’s about changing work habits and definitions of success on a cultural level - changing collective mindsets and collective environments.  The same is true for climate change.  While I believe that the climate crisis is the #1 issue facing the planet right now, it is far from a singular issue.  It is incredibly pluralistic.  

While one might examine their own four quadrants, we must acknowledge that there is not just one lens looking at these four quadrants or one experience that's shared between the four, rather it’s incredibly pluralistic, and intersectional.  In its most simple definition intersectionality looks at how our social and political identities overlap and are used for both privilege and discrimintation.  Gender, sex, race, economic class, disabiliy, ability, religion, location, and others all overlap and intersect.  These intersections occur in our personal identities, as groups we are a part of, in social contexts, and in underlying systemic structures.  

These intersections can be used for both power and oppression.  When we look at the climate crisis, just like most other issues, it’s often the case that those who are in power are exploiting those who are oppressed.  This is how we see the effects of environmental racism - when poorer neighborhoods and people of color are disproportionately exposed to harmful chemicals, pollution, and gases.  What are the living conditions of the people who support the comforts of your living?  These statements are not about blame or guilt, but about justice, about being proactive in addressing this as we go forward.  Climate justice is racial justice, is gender justice, is economic justice, is health justice, is so much more.

This is the reason that we can’t just say “hey everyone eat organic plant based foods and then we’ll solve the climate crisis”.  There are layers upon layers upon layers of systems that go into who can afford it, who has access to it, where is it sold, where is it not, what kinds of educations did those people have, how much does it cost, can you afford that on minimum wage, what should minimum wage be, who subsidies growing and distributing cheap food, who markets it, who manages it, who profits, who is harmed?  So to truly solve for “let’s all eat organic food” we’d need to address political regulation, education, urban design, racial and economic disparities, how we value our time, how we eat, where we eat, and so many more complex problems.  No one designer or design team can connect all these dots, but we can create solutions that solve for more than one problem - that are pluralistic and intersectional.  In part this is what transition design is about - how do you solve for multiple points, that when combined will transition us forward.  Terry Irwin has a wonderful analogy of thinking about Transition Design like acupuncture - putting needles in at multiple points to make the energy flow in the right direction.  

You’re burnt out.  We’re burnt out.  The planet is burnt out. Take your time off (even if it’s just an hour) but use that time to plan how you will be proactive in finding regenerative solutions for yourself and your community.   Let’s prevent the next forest fire instead of fighting it, both metaphorically and literally.  Rebuild the foundation that was built without proper support so our buildings won’t fall.  Do not return to the same way of life before COVID.  We must look for design solutions that solve multiple problems - intersecting with different issues - giving power and voice to those who are most harmed.  We must design solutions that will have the most positive impact - not for you and your bottom line, but for your community, for the planet.  We must design solutions that are regenerative - that don’t suck our energy out, but give us more for both ourselves and our planet.  

Today marks the first day of a new semester for me, and the first day of teaching in person (vaccinated and masked) since March 2020.  For those of us on “academic time” it’s a new beginning, but just like the rest of the world, it feels more unknown than ever before.  So I ask you the same thing I plan to ask my students in our first class… 

• What regenerates you? 

• What is your “I”? your “We”?  your “It”?  your “Its” in your four quadrants?  

• How do you make sure you're supported, so that you can support regenerative change in yourself, your community, and the world?  

• What dots do you need to connect?  And be connected to?