In my old banking job, where I worked for 12 years, I found myself frustrated with the slow pace of the work, the layers of red tape and approvals to get anything done. After all, banking was a highly regulated industry, and while there were many rules to follow, they were just simply being a good bank by following them. I felt tired, drained, and lacked energysimilar symptoms to burnout. While the organization was frequently voted a best place to work, I couldnt figure out why my great job felt so bad. I wasnt overworking or spending endless evenings logging in, so the typical paths to burnout didnt make sense.
What I was actually experiencing was rust out.
A COSTLY CONDITION
The literal definition of rust out is to decay and become unusable through the action of rust. Rust out is a type of burnout that comes from not using your unique skills and talents at work, lacking learning opportunities, and ultimately, dreading the repetitive tasks at work that sap your creativity.
Not only is this costly to an employees peace and mental health, but its costly to employers, too. According to Gallups 2025 engagement report, the global percentage of engaged employees was 21% in 2024. Its even worse for leadership. For young managers (under 35), engagement dropped by 5%, and female manager engagement dropped by 7%.
Here’s what to do if you suspect you may be experiencing rust out:
CONDUCT AN ENERGY AUDIT
One of the biggest contributors to rust out is spending your energy in places that dont align with your unique talents and skills. In my own experience, and in working with my clients, a simple way to uncover your unique talents is to notice your energy. I believe every work activity falls into one of three categories: energy suckers, energy stallers, and energy surgers. Energy suckers feel like they take heroic effort, even though the task wasnt all that large or difficult. Energy stallers are tricky because they throw your energy into neutral. You dont feel drained while doing them, but they dont ignite your energy either. Energy surgers are the sweet spot youre looking for. These projects bring a paradoxthey are challenging, but they make you feel amazing, in flow, and like your most creative self. When conducting an energy audit, assess what percentage of your time is spent on energy suckers, energy stallers, and energy surgers.
DUMP, DELEGATE, OR OUTSOURCE
After you conduct your energy audit, the next step is to ask yourself: What can I dump, delegate or outsource? You want to dump the things that drain your energy the most. They are likely tasks or projects that we said yes to months or years ago that we keep doing because were on autopilot. In my own experience, these were old reports I would review that no one was paying attention to. If you dont want or need to be there, and it doesnt align with your values and priorities, it may be time to dump it. If you cant dump it, can you delegate it? In a day of back-to-back meetings, I noticed that two of my team members were in there with me. They could handle the meeting and make the decisions, but because I was in the meeting as their leader, people would defer to me anyway. I decided to delegate that meeting. And by asking myself, Where does my presence subtract value for fellow team members? I found more meetings I could delegate. And finally, if you cant dump it or delegate it, can you outsource it? In my years of working at technology and consulting firms, I discovered the power of outsourcing: from office snack delivery to marketing activities to contractors.
ADVOCATE FOR YOUR TALENTS
Once you are clear on what your energy surgers are, it is up to you to communicate clearly to your boss and peers what your strongest talents are and what type of work youd most like to take on. Leaders cant read minds, so the more you communicate the work you value and ask them to think of you when opportunities come up, the more likely they are to share your name and talents when you are not in the room. This may not happen overnight but through consistent conversations it can work. The good news is that several of my clients have stayed at a company they loved and redesigned their roles into something more enjoyable simply by having this energy and talents conversation with their leader.
DECIDE IF A CAREER CHANGE IS NEEDED
Sometimes, all of this reflection, advocacy, and self-awareness can bring us to an unexpected place: wondering if we are in the right career and if a change is needed to overcome rust out. While I always encourage folks to advocate and change their current environment so we dont bring the same issues into a new role, there are some questions you can ask to help you determine if its time to stay or go, such as:
Does this organization align with my values?
Do I agree with the way leadership makes decisions?
How have I advocated for the changes I want?
Have I set and communicated necessary boundaries for how I spend my time and energy?
If you determine that there isnt values alignment and no changes have been made despite your advocacy, it might be time to look elsewhere.
The results of beating rust out can boost an employeesand their employer’s peace, potential, and paychecks and profits through improved productivity, well-being, and engagement.
Libbie Bischoff didn’t set out to reinvent the signature.
Really, she was just flipping through a vintage knitting magazine from the 1950s. The Minneapolis-based type designer collects the mags, partly because her grandmother taught her to knit, and partly because she finds incredible typography hidden within their pages. It was in one of these magazines that she found the casual, flowing script that would become one of Docusign’s new signature styles.
Together with Lynne Yuna New York-based type designer, calligrapher, and founder of the studio Space TypeBischoff is responsible for the first major update to the platform’s signature options in more than 20 years. For Docusign, a company that has processed a billion-plus digital signatures, changing the look of a digital John Hancock is no small decision. Its a move that reflects a quiet but significant cultural shift: Cursive is fading, as is the traditional idea of what a signature should be.
[insert paywall]
Reviving history
A Docusign survey found that only 51% of Gen Zers sign their name in cursive, compared to 80% of boomers. As a lover of cursive and calligraphy, I feel depressed when I read that, but facts are hard to dispute. As our most important life moments move online, its logical to expect that the digital signature would become a new form of self-expression.
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
Bischoff and Yun were tasked with injecting personality into a digital interaction that can often feel sterile. Their work explores how a signature can be authentically digital by moving beyond traditional cursive to reflect a user’s personality in an era when fewer people write by hand.
[Image: Libbie Bischoff (design)/Docusign]
For Bischoff, the process of creating the new signatures was an act of revival. She wanted to breathe digital life into historical handwriting. The script from the knitting magazine became “The Vintage Enthusiast,” a friendly, flowing cursive with printed, upright capital letters.
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
“The capitals are all printed, but then the cursive lowercase element of it is very fast and kind of casual and more similar to . . . how [somebody] would write their signature,” she tells me. The style carries a sentimental weight for her, evoking the era when her grandmother would have been knitting.
[Image: Libbie Bischoff (design)/Docusign]
Her other creation, “The Letter Writer,” came from an even older source: a beautifully inscribed book from 1916 she spotted in an antique store. Bischoff was so struck by the penmanship that she snapped a picture. From there, she built the complete typefacea clean, upright script with a professional feel, featuring bold caps and quirky lowercase letters. “The writing is very beautiful and just very professional,” she says. “That level of care going into a gift as simple as a book is, I dont know, I just thought that was so nice.”
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
Calligraphy for a digital age
While Bischoff looked for inspiration in found artifacts, Yun got deep into the craft of calligraphy itself, exploring how the human hand could be felt in a digital format. Her four typefaces for the Docusign project push the boundaries of what a signature can be.
[Image: Lynne Yun (design)/Docusign]
“The Overachiever” is a sharp, confident script born from Yun’s study of 20th-century Czech calligrapher Oldøich Menhart. Menhart’s work is characterized by earthy, bold, and expressive calligraphic forms. For Yun, his work was the inspiration she needed to craft a modern digital typeface that would bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary design.
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
As a calligrapher herself, she believes Menhart provided a foundation for a new style that feels personal and expressive without falling into the common traps of being either too gimmicky or overly formal. “I wanted to embody that era of calligraphy where it’s about personal expression, but you want to express yourself, like not in a way where it’s full-on goofy or full-on like Here is my crown, she tells me.
[Image: Lynne Yun (design)/Docusign]
For “The Renaissance Soul,” she took a more experimental approach. “If The Overachiever is like, Ooh, I cross my Ts . . . I think The Renaissance Soul is the other way, where I do what I want,” Yun says with a laugh.
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
She started by writing letters over and over with a calligraphy marker, then moved to a square brush and ink to explore how expressive the forms could get without losing legibility. The result is a bold, dramatic typeface with voluptuous curves and expressive, sculptural forms designed to command attention.
Not all of Yun’s new typefaces are based on traditional script, though. For “The Curator,” a slanted, geometric sans serif, Yun says she wanted to create a hybrid that feels modern yet personal. The challenge was to infuse warmth into a typically clean and cool style. “I purposely wanted it to feel like a very modern version of handwriting, although it is nothing like handwriting at all because it is a very sans-serif feeling,” she explains.
[Image: Lynne Yun (design)/Docusign]
The creative process was about playing with perception. She started with “the structure of a modernist sans serif” and then worked to give it “warm, handwritten . . . vibes.” The key to this, she says, was creating the illusion of a connected script without actually connecting the letters. “It has that notion of like, ‘Oh, it would connect if it was like a handwritten scribble,’ but it’s not,” she tells me. Indeed, its clean-cut but still representative of a digital-native style rooted in a personal, human feeling.
[Image: courtesy Docusign]
Finally, “The Party Starter” is a bold, high-contrast typeface with a playful attitude, as Yun describes it, noting the inspiration for it began with a French specimen from Constantine in 1834 that she wanted to combine with the spirit of 19th-century American woodcut type.
[Image: Lynne Yun (design)/Docusign]
“I think that in mid-century America we had a lot of big personalities. No matter what they look like, that was the vibe I wanted to capture,” she says. Yun made initial sketches that were faithful to the historical source but then intentionally deviated for a more refined, modern feel. She says she identified the “inconsistencies and quirks in the original that worked against a harmonious texture and updated them for a modern aesthetic.
The goal was to create something with a “slightly wilder, playful appearance” that wouldnt look out of place at a formal function. The result is a typeface defined by what Yun calls “huge contrast, like big, bold, bulk terminals”a visual representation of packing the biggest personality possible into a small space, which feels appropriate given how small signature spaces can be in so many documents.
Beyond cursive
I still question whether people are really ready to sign a legal document with something that doesn’t look like, well, a signature.
Bischoff believes the reaction will be positive, if generational. “I think younger people dont care about cursive-style things. I think older people will gravitate maybe towards those,” she suggests. Which is why Docusign wanted this new generation of typefaces, of course.
Yun sees it as a natural evolution. For years, the digital world was stuck between the “super formal” and gimmicky Comic-sansy “marker writing. This project, she feels, allows signatures to be “authentically digital” rather than just mimicking analog tools. “I think weve evolved past the point of wanting to fake pens in the digital space,” she says. “And now were just like, ‘Hey, this is a typeface and it has a personality.
Docusign claims this is all about acknowledging that in a 99.9% digital world, your digital signature should still feel like you. Yun and Bischoff tell me that it was a chance to expand the definition of digital identity. To me, being neither a boomer nor a millennial or a Z but a Gen Xer, the answer to my rhetorical question is really much simpler: Sorry, Docusign, but your previous signatures really sucked. These new ones? They are pretty cool, even if I still hate the end of calligraphy and the actual bloody pen.
For many stars, writing a children’s book is a fun side project they do to capitalize on their fame. Kate McKinnona Saturday Night Live alum who has starred in recent movies like Barbie and The Rosesis certainly famous. But the truth is that she had dreamed of writing a novel for middle schoolers since her mid-twenties, years before she even auditioned for SNL.
As a child, McKinnon had loved books about slightly oddball characters, like those found in Roald Dahl books. Her favorite heroine was Pippi Longstocking, whom she played in a kindergarten performance. She loved the character so much that she would show up at school for years in a full-on Pippi costume, complete with pipe cleaners in her hair to mimic the heroine’s iconic protruding red pigtails.
After graduating from Columbia University, between auditioning for sketch comedy roles, McKinnon sat down to write a middle-grade novel of her own. Holed up in her apartment, she plotted out a story about a trio of sisters in the Victorian era who don’t fit in in their stuffy town, where girls are meant to be prim and proper.
The problem was that she could not get past the first chapter; she just wrote and rewrote it, frustrated that it wasn’t quite hitting the right notes. Then, in 2012, at the age of 28, McKinnon snagged a spot on SNL and quickly became one of the show’s biggest stars, leaving very little room for her novel. “It was very much at the backand the middleof my mind,” McKinnon recalls. “Every time I had a week off, I would work on it.”
[Cover Image: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers]
In 2022, McKinnon departed SNL and finally had time to devote to the novel. After marinating on it for more than a decade, it came together, and she landed a book deal with Hachette. Her book, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, debuted in 2024 and became an instant New York Times bestseller. She’s just released the second book, called Secrets of the Purple Pearl, in what will eventually become a series.
I sat down to speak with her about her creative process, and why we should feel free to pursue several dreams at the same time. Here are three things I learned.
[Cover Image: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers]
She Didn’t Let A Lack of Expertise Stop Her
McKinnon studied theater in college and had spent years training as an actress and comedian. She had never studied creative writing, but she didn’t let that stop her from taking a stab at writing a novel. “I didn’t know anything about writing,” she recalls. “I didn’t know you’re supposed to write a whole draft before going back and fixing the first chapter. So I just fixed the first chapter, probably 500 times.”
Many writing instructors urge their students not to get hung up on the details so early on. But McKinnon’s approach was actually helpful because it allowed her to figure out many aspects of the plot and the characters. It was an unconventional approach to character development, but it helped her create her first three characters, the sisters Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee.
[Image: courtesy Little, Brown Books for Young Readers]
But after writing several drafts of the first chapter, she felt like something was missing. “My big problem was that I was writing about three oddball girls who had no adults in their life validating them,” she says. “It ended up being sad every time I wrote it. Then I felt there needed to be a mentor figure who recognized the good in these girls.” This figure ended up being Millicent Quibb, the title character of the series.
McKinnon was also noodling through the broader themes of the book she wanted to communicate. While she was very interested in painting these quirky characters, she also wanted to say something more profound about identity, and how hard it can feel not to fit in. “The themes eluded me for the longest time,” she says. “I needed to know what I am actually trying to say here.”
Ultimately, McKinnon didn’t let her lack of formal training prevent her from throwing herself into novel writing. In fact, it’s the process of trial and error that has allowed her to hone her craft. Now, McKinnon has novel writing down to a science. It took her more than 12 years to write the first Millicent Quibb book, but she wrote the second one in a matter of months. “Left to my own devices, I would never complete anything because I am so hard on myself,” she says. “But being under a deadline is what allowed me to complete this.”
[Image: courtesy Little, Brown Books for Young Readers]
She Wove Her Other Passions Into This Project
While McKinnon hadn’t trained as a writer, she did have other skills that most writers don’t have: an ability to build quirky, complex characters from the ground up.
To create the characters in her book, McKinnon would pace around her room speaking in funny voices, which is something she’s enjoyed doing her whole life (and that eventually became her full-time job on SNL). “In my mid-twenties, before getting on SNL, writing this book was almost like doing sketch comedy, without anybody there to watch you,” she says. “I was just doing it alone in my room.”
It’s been a very effective strategy. All of her characters are memorable and hilarious. Eventually, she was able to bring all of these characters to life in the audiobook of the series, which she voices along with her sister, Emily Lynne.
[Image: courtesy Little, Brown Books for Young Readers]
It’s Important For Her To Speak To Children
Most of McKinnon’s career has targeted adult audiences. Her first acting jobs were in comedy, starting with The Big Gay Sketch Comedy Show and then SNL. And much of her acting has been in movies targeting adults, like The Roses, Bombshell, and the TV series Joe vs. Carole on Peacock.
But McKinnon is also eager to reach children, particularly at this moment when the world feels so volatile. Writing the Millicent Squibb books has been meaningful to her because it has allowed her to connect with children and give them hope. Indeed, the Squibb character is inspired by the many mentors in her own life who believed in her and helped her find her path. But looking back, her childhood seems idyllic compared with what children are dealing with today. “Young people today are up against a whole host of problems I could not even conceive of when I was in middle school in the 90s,” she says.
Her hope is that her voice gives children some joy in a stressful time, but also empowers them to act to make things better for themselves and others. “I think this genre is not just fun, but hopeful, because it focuses on questions of identity and moral engagement in society,” McKinnon says. “It’s about figuring out who you are so that you can help other people. That’s something young people today can’t ignore the way I could.”
Todays labor market may be stagnating, but its also uncertain. Candidates arent behaving as many leaders would expect. The dynamic is trending towards an employers market. As a result, employers expect that candidates will increase their job searches, accept lower pay increases, and accept new roles more eagerly. But in reality, job searching has actually declined, pay expectations remain high, and candidates are reluctant to move. And this has resulted in a critical talent supply shortage.
According to research from Gartner, 29% of candidates spent more than five hours per week on active job searches in the second quarter of 2025. Thats down from 49% in the first quarter of 2023. Additionally, in a 2025 Gartner survey of nearly 3,000 candidates, 53% identified higher compensation as their top reason for accepting a job offer. Acceptances are also significantly down with 51% of candidates reporting they accepted their most recent offer in the second quarter of 2025, down from 75% in the first quarter of 2025.
Candidates might expect more from jobs today, or they might be responding more to uncertainty than market stagnation. Whatever the reason may be, theyre willing to wait for jobs that meet their higher expectations. As a result, recruiters are feeling greater pressure to understand candidates’ wants and how to deliver on them.
To compete successfully for critical talent today, organizations need to adopt an approach thats more consistent with a fluid labor market. Below are the things that leaders need to focus on if they want to hire the best and brightest.
Engaging talent selectively
Many leaders expect candidates to put more effort into their job search today. The reality is that job searching has sharply declined.
To bridge the job search expectation gap, organizations need to focus on building deeper relationships with the right talent, just like they would in a more fluid market.
HR can guide business leaders to narrow their hiring focus to roles with the greatest business impact or complexity. This is especially important in todays cost-constrained environment. HR should prioritize deploying recruiters who excel at building long-term candidate relationships.
Automating hiring processes for less critical roles can also help free up resources. This allows recruiters to concentrate on attracting talent for the capabilities that matter most.
Managing attribute mix
Labor market observers may expect candidates to settle for modest pay increases. But many are holding out for the full employment deal they want.
To close this expectation gap, its up to the organization to amplify the right mix of attributes for the talent theyre targeting.
HR can help business leaders pinpoint the critical skills and experience levels that they need, then identify current employees who match those profiles. Running focus groups with those employees can uncover the attributes that differentiate the organization from the perspective of those specific employees.
Enlisting current employees from target talent segments can also help craft powerful messaging. They can help shape the tone, emphasis, and content that will resonate most with the candidates that the organization wants to attract
Mitigating career risks
Seasoned HR leaders might expect candidates to be eager to accept offers in todays climate. In reality, candidates are hesitant to accept. Gartner research finds that candidate willingness to accept job offers peaked in the last quarter of 2023, at 87%. This fell significantly by mid-2024. By the second quarter of 2025, only 51% of candidates reported they had accepted a new job offer.
To resolve this offer-acceptance expectation gap, organizations need to focus less on convincing candidates to move jobs and more on the risk of not moving in the first place.
HR needs to equip recruiters to help candidates think through their options, weigh risks, and make confident decisions. When candidates feel supported by the organization, theyre more likely to move forward. Thats why its important to train recruiters to be able to have these types of conversations, so that theyre in a better position to build relationships
Following this path, HR is not simply reapplying the playbook from a fluid market. In todays climate, if the primary hesitation among talent is a fear of being Last In, First Out, then recruiters need to shift the conversation from the risk of making the move to not making it.
HR leaders today cant rely on traditional assumptions about candidate behavior in a stagnating market. Todays market may be stagnant, but its also uncertain. Candidates are responding less to stagnation and more to that uncertainty. Until that changes, organizations should adopt a candidate playbook that reflects a more fluid market. And thats a market that demands tighter positioning and greater assertiveness.
Move over quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays, and career cushioning. A new workplace behavior is on the rise: the self-aware underperformer. Contrary to hustle culture, these workers are knowingly underperforming and not doing anything about it.
It used to be the delusional underperformerthe employee who thought they were doing a great jobthat gave HR headaches. The self-aware underperformer, on the other hand, is aware that theyre underperforming and not taking any actions to rectify it.
As leaders, this isnt something you can afford to ignore. After all, underperformance doesnt just materialize. The culture has been brewing and cultivating on our watch. Unfortunately, far too many companies prioritize optics over results, turn to placating instead of coaching, and compensate instead of addressing. In some cases, theyve repurposed authenticity and transparency (both of which are positive attributes) to serve as convenient excuses.
This dynamic leads to the self-aware underperformer.
Many have hailed self-awareness as the holy grail of performance. Its often tied to superior decision-making, enhanced team dynamics, and thriving leadership behavior. Despite the admissions, true self-awareness appears to be in short supply. According to a 2018 article by Harvard Business Review, 95% of people think theyre self-aware, yet only 10% to 15% actually are. This is the confronting dilemma. The perceived claim of awareness without the change is a disguise for the underperformers illusion of responsibility.
It feels like accountability. Yet when employees repeatedly demonstrate awareness, apologies, and empathy but fail to change, its no longer just their performance that suffers.
Here are five signs you are working with a self-aware underperformer
1. Underperformance as an identity
These employees wear their underperformance like a badge. They deliver the bare minimum. Previously, people would have seen their behavior as complacent. Now, theyve reframed it as a kind of delusional authenticity. “I know I might not be the best, but Im steady.” By leaning into this identity, they transform underperformance into their personal brand.
As a leader, you need to separate awareness from accountability. Remember, awareness isnt a deliverable. A useful response is, “Thanks for raising that. Whats your plan to fix it this week?” This keeps the conversation future-focused and signals that its not enough for them to recognize theyre underperforming.
2. Self-deprecation
Some employees deflect by making light of their shortcomings. They might say the following statement with a smile or a joke. “You know Im hopeless at numbers.” They disarm criticism. Managers might even laugh along. But six months later, the reports continue to be late. What feels like humility in the moment is a shield that protects a lackluster effort to improve.
To address this, anchor evaluations to progress, not personality. Self-aware underperformers often rely on charm, humility, or likability. That means grounding assessments to measurable outcomes. What matters is not how self-aware they appear, but whether their output improves quarter to quarter.
3. Passively reframing underperformance as a moral issue
They position self-awareness as a conscious decision to reject the hustle culture. They might make excuses like “why should I extend myself?” or “were not saving lives. They might champion underperformance as a moral cause.
Tackling this attitude requires managers to raise the bar on that employees comfort zone. If someone openly settles for less, its on you as a leader to decide whether thats an acceptable plateau. In high-expectation roles and cultures, make clear that comfort is not a contract. Performance standards exist for a reason, and you cant suspend them simply because someone is candid about not aspiring higher.
4. Your narrative becomes theirs
You want to be “that supportive manager.” In the beginning, you might be patient and give them the benefit of the doubt. “They are still coming up to speed,” or “they need more training, resources, and help.” But there comes a point when it becomes over-accommodating. You might find yourself allocating their work to others, extending deadlines, and making continual allowances. Before you know it, their performance is no longer their responsibility, but yours.
You need to interrupt the rationalization loop. Shift the discussion from causes to choices. Ask, “Given these constraints, what can you still control and improve?” This reframes the narrative from circumstance to agency, which puts responsibility back in the employees hands.
5. An abundance of excuses
Self-aware underperformers rarely run out of explanations: outdated systems, shifting market trends, and unclear mandates. These rationalizations are often factually correct, but function as shields. Rather than moving from problem to solution, employees stay stuck in the narrative of why things couldnt be done. When they appear to show empathy, it becomes harder to confront. “I know this must be frustrating for the team, and I really appreciate everyones patience.” Its a clever move because its a neat redirect away from the issue.
Instead, redefine empathy as action. Empathy is valuable only when it translates into behavioural change. Encourage employees to pair recognition with repair. “Youve named the impact on the team, now lets agree on what youll do differently.”
The real leadership test isnt spotting underperformance. As leaders, you need to see through the packaging of awareness without improvement. Awareness without change is simply underperformance in more eloquent clothing. The best leaders know how to thank people for their honesty, and then hold them to the change that honesty demands.
Camping. Why anyone would put themselves through an odyssey of gross insects and pooping in holes is beyond me, but you do you, Steve. I’ll do me.
However, if I were forced to go sleep in the woods, I would like to use this new camping mattress by Chinese sleep startup Mazzu created in collaboration with London-based design studio Layer. It looks like the closest thing to a Four Seasons bed this side of the Rio Grande. Or any río (just don’t get me close to a river).
[Image: courtesy Layer]
The Mazzu Camping Mattress isn’t your typical inflatable pad that promises comfort on-the-go but delivers back pain for a week. It’s built around 72 precision-engineered elastic spring unitspre-compressed coils encased in durable jackets that adapt independently to your body’s contours. Each unit flexes on its own, providing ergonomic support whether you’re lying flat or curled up on your side (you know, like in an actual bed).
[Photo: courtesy Layer]
Layer tells me via email that people want “the comfort of home when they’re outdoors, and traditional inflatable or foam mats just don’t deliver that.” Which, yes, that’s exactly my point. The company says conventional options are bulky, unreliable, or simply uncomfortable. And many are unsustainable.
Layer and Mazzu saw a clear gap to create a sustainable, portable system that offers bed-like comfort without compromise, bringing “a real sense of restfulness to the camping experience.”
[Photo: courtesy Layer]
Come together, right now
The collaboration between Layer and Mazzu wasn’t just about slapping springs into a camping format. Mazzus engineers have been developing elastic spring technology since they started their sleep company in Fujian, China, in 2024. Layer worked closely with Mazzu to translate that into a modular outdoor system.
The design studio says there were many rounds of prototypingexploring different spring densities, connection systems, and layoutsuntil they arrived at something simple and robust that’s also intuitive to use.
[Photo: courtesy Layer]
The pieces click together like Lego bricks and are secured with a strong cord. When the mattress base is assembled, you add a thin, 100% cotton cushion on top to smooth everything out. Layer tells me it gets assembled “in just a matter of minutes,” and you can be set up and ready to rest almost as quickly as rolling out a standard mat, “but with a completely different sleep experience.”
The other advantage of this design, the company points out, is that its not harmful to the planet. Layer says the portable coils structure is built without foam or glue (Mazzu, however, points out that the pad on top uses polyester fiber and high-resilience polyurethane). Layer says the mattress is built to last: “Every component can be replaced, repaired, or upgraded individually, which extends its lifespan and reduces wastesomething that’s very rare in camping gear.”
[Photo: courtesy Layer]
Packed in a cooler
The complete mattressincluding foldable base, spring modules, and topperpacks into a wheeled case no larger than a cooler. Once emptied, Layer says, that case doubles as a nightstand or storage box at the campsite. So it’s not just about better sleep, the company says, it’s about circularity and smart use of space.
The color palette takes cues from outdoor gear: foliage tones and bright accents for visibility. The open structure showcases the engineering inside, which I appreciate(if I’m paying for 72 independent spring units, I want to see them).
The Mazzu Camping Mattress launches this month. Pricing in China is about 2,259 yuan (about $320), but no official price has been announced internationally. If it actually delivers on the promise of bringing regular mattress comfort into the wilderness, it might be worth whatever they’re charging. Maybe then I’ll consider camping. (LOL! No.)
The Trump administration is spending more than half a billion dollars to help prop up the dying coal industry. Its also weakening pollution regulations and opening up more federal land to coal mining.
All of this isnt likely to save the industryand also isnt likely to do much to meet the surging demand for power from data centers for AI.
Coal power is expensive, and that isnt going to change
Aging coal power plants are now so expensive to run that hundreds have retired over the last decade, including around 100 that retired or made plans to retire during Trumps first term. Offering relatively small subsidies isnt likely to change the long-term trend. I dont think its going to change the underlying economics, says Michelle Solomon, a manager in the electricity program at the think tank Energy Innovation. The reasons why coal has increased in cost will continue to be fundamentally true. The cost of coal power grew 28% between 2021 and 2024, or more than double the rate of inflation.
One reason is age: the average coal power plant in the U.S. is around 50 years old, and they arent designed to last much longer. Because renewable energy is cheaper, and regulation is likely to ramp up in the future, investors dont see building new coal power plants as viable. But trying to keep outdated plants running also doesnt make economic sense.
The new funding cant go very far. The Department of Energy plans to spend $625 million on coal projects, including $350 million to recommission and retrofit old plants. Another $25 million is set aside for retrofitting coal plants with natural gas co-firing systems. But that type of project can cost hundreds of millions or even a billion dollars for a single plant. (The $25 million, presumably, might only cover planning or a small pilot.)
Other retrofits might only extend the life of a power plant by a few years. Because the plants will continue to be expensive to run, some power plant owners may not think the subsidies are worth it.
Utilities want to move on
If coal power plants keep running past their retirement age, even with some retrofits, costs keep going up for consumers. Thats something that you really see in states that continue to rely on coal for a big part of their electricity mix, says Solomon. Like Kentucky and West Virginia, who have had their cost for power increase at some of the fastest rates in the country.
In Michigan, earlier this year, the DOE forced a coal power plant to stay open after it was scheduled to retire. The DOE cited an emergency, though neither the grid operator nor the utility said that there were power supply issues; the planned retirement of the plant included building new sources of energy to replace it. The utility reported to the SEC that within the first 38 days, alone, it spent $29 million to keep the plant running. (The emergency order is still in place, and being challenged by multiple lawsuits.)
The extra expense shows up on consumers bills. One report estimates that by 2028, efforts to keep large power plants from retiring could cost consumers more than $3 billion a year.
Utilities have long acknowledged the reality that there are less expensive energy sources. In the first Trump administration, in 2018, utilities resisted Trump’s attempts to use emergency powers to keep uneconomic coal plants open.
When utilities plan to retire a power plant, there’s a long planning process. Plants begin making decision to defer maintenance that would otherwise be necessary. And many won’t want to reverse their decisions. It’s true that demand for power from data centers has led some utilities to keep coal plants online longerand electric bills are already soaring in areas near large data centers. But Trump’s incentives may not make much difference for others. The last coal plant in New England just shut down years early, despite the current outlook for data centers.
“Utilities do have to take a long-term view,” says Lori Bird, director of the U.S. energy program at the nonprofit World Resources Institute. “They’re doing multi-year planning. So they consider the durability and economic viability of these assets over the longer term. They have not been economic, and they’re also the highest-emitting greenhouse gas facilities.” Even if the Trump administration has rolled back environmental regulations, she says, future administrations could reverse that; continuing to use coal is a risky proposition. In most states, utilities also have to comply with renewable power goals.
There are better solutions
It’s true that the U.S. needs more power generation, quickly. It’s not clear exactly how much new electricity will be neededsome of that will depend on how much AI is a bubble and how much tech companies can shrink their power usage at data centers. But the nonprofit Rewiring America calculated that data centers that are under construction or in planning could add 93 gigawatts of electricity demand to the U.S. grid by the end of the decade.
The nonprofit argues that some or even all of that new capacity could be covered by rooftop solar and batteries at homes. Cheap utility-scale renewable power plants could obviously also help, though the Trump administration is actively fighting them. Battery storage can help provide 24/7 energy. One analysis of a retiring coal plant in Maryland found that it would be less expensive to replace it with batteries and transmission upgrades than to keep it running.
Temporarily saving a handful of coal power plants won’t cover the new power needs. It would add to air pollution, water pollution, and climate pollution. And it would significantly push up power bills when consumers are already strugglin. Real support for an “energy emergency” would include faster permitting and other work to accelerate building affordable renewable energy, experts say.
“Making sure that resources can compete openly is really important,” says Solomon. “It’s important to not only meet the demand from AI, but make sure that it doesn’t raise costs for electricity consumers.”
Below, Nick Foster shares five key insights from his new book, Could Should Might Dont: How We Think About the Future.
Nick has spent the last 25 years working within companies at the very forefront of emerging technology, from Apple and Sony to Nokia and Dyson. Most recently, he was head of design at Google X. He has established himself as a leading figure in the field of Futures Design. In 2021, he was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry, the highest accolade for a British designer.
Whats the big idea?
We need to have a conversation about the future, but not the kind youd expect. Humans have already talked at length about what the future may or may not hold. What we rarely discuss, and need to start addressing, is how we think about the future. By understanding the ways in which people process what lies ahead, we can all become better-equipped critics of the futures we are shown or sold. To design a better future, we need better futurists.
1. Thinking about the future is more important than ever.
There is a palpable sense of curiosity, uncertainty, and anxiety about the future. Google searches for What will the future be like? have tripled since 2020. I think thats because we have experienced more change in the last hundred years than at any other time in history.
A hundred years ago, we had not yet invented penicillin, and less than half the homes in America had electricity. My father, who lived in the U.K., has experienced both a world before the creation of vinyl albums and after the creation of ChatGPT. Even if I think about myself, there were half as many people on Earth when I was born as there are today.
Much of this rapid change has come with baggage, and many of the things were trying to fix today are the result of insufficient thought about the future from previous generations. This needs to change. To start, we need to have a conversation about our ability to think about the future.
I see the world through a design lens, but Ive spent my entire career around entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, strategists, investors, business leaders, and policymakers, and it seems that no one is very good at thinking about the future. This skill is significantly underprioritized, underfunded, and underdeveloped in almost all of us. Our thinking about the future tends to fall into one of four main varieties: could, should, might, dont.
2. Could Futurism.
Could Futurism is a way of thinking about the future with wide-eyed optimism. This is probably the most familiar and publicly embraced type of futurism. If you type futuristic into Google images, youll see over-the-top visions of flying cars, humanoid robots, and towering glass architecture. This is the kind of stuff you see from futurists on conference stages or when futurists are invited onto TV, and this is also how we typically experience the future when we go to things like trade shows or expos. This futurism is built around the modernist idea of growth and change through strident progress, mechanization, and industrialism. This way of thinking about the future has largely grown in parallel with the growth of science fiction, which has fed ideas into the minds of powerful leaders. Its exciting, escapist, and intended to shock.
This futurism is built around the modernist idea of growth and change through strident progress, mechanization, and industrialism.
But Could Futurism has weaknesses that are often overlooked. Just like sci-fi storytelling, this kind of futurism is heroic. It treats the future as a world filled with extreme characters having extreme experiences in extreme placesand often treads a bit closer to advertising than truth. It encourages us to think of the future as a place of extreme transformation, but doesnt talk about transition or interstitial change. While it prides itself on imagination, Could Futurism is also incredibly repetitive, as evident in those Google search results. This futurism represents a placeholder for deep thinking, offering simplified icons that we can drop into our slideshows and conversations. It lacks genuine, rigorous consideration.
3. Should Futurism.
Should Futurism is focused on finding some sort of certainty and assuredness in the future. In the olden times, this was mostly built around things like soothsaying and predictions by people like Nostradamus or cutting open the belly of a goat and interpreting the shape of the entrails that fell out. This futurism can help us narrow down the future and concentrate on one dot that lies ahead.
In contemporary society, the world of Should Futurism is mostly dominated by corporate strategy. It is built on the idea that we can somehow take data from the past and convert that solid line into a dotted line that leads us to a position in the future. Though often useful, the downfall of this thinking is that we are creating pieces of well-styled, well-executed numeric fiction. Those dotted lines on charts are not real facts. Once the solid line turns into a dotted line, it ceases to be data and becomes a story.
Youll often find people in the world of Should Futurism making bold predictions or statements about things that are definitely going to happen. They love that quote from Wayne Gretzky about skating to where the puck will be. But knowing where the puck will be is essentially a story. This type of thinking tends to view the world as a system that can be decoded, converted into an algorithm, and then utilized to create simulations. But anybody whos put any money into the stock market knows that the dotted line heading into the future is just a story. Our world is volatile, stochastic, and ultimately unmappable. The idea of using historical patterns to project futures is remarkably unreliable. To use an acronym from the Army, our world is VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
4. Might Futurism.
Might Futurism emerges from the idea of plotting multiple scenarios out into the future, kind of like chess. This thinking is embedded, to an extent, in all of us whenever were planning an event or thinking through eventualities. But Might Futurism became more formalized around the Cold War with organizations like the Rand Corporation and people like physicist Herman Kahn. It was also grown upon by people like Pierre Wack, who worked for Royal Dutch Shell, trying to run scenarios for the future of their business.
The problem with Might Futurism is, it can get tangled up in jargon and diagrams that provide countless possibilities but no real answers.
In todays world, this is referred to mostly by the term strategic foresight, and its probably one of our most popular modern forms of futurism. It has an awful lot of methodologies, matrices, diagrams, and techniques for thinking about the future as a series of decision trees.
The problem with Might Futurism is, it can get tangled up in jargon and diagrams that provide countless possibilities but no real answers. Its also not very good at imagining things. We often think that certain things are ridiculous or unlikely, but just look at companies like Blockbuster, Nokia, and Kodak, which didnt anticipate what was coming for them in the future. Or, if they did, put them in the realm of near impossibility. That how our brains work. Thats why when we watch things like magic and illusions, they fill us with wonder. Imagining what might happen in the future and building a sufficiently broad number of scenarios is extremely difficult.
5. Dont Futurism.
Dont Futurism is focused on what might go wrong or things that we dont want to do. We may refer to these things as dystopian. Fear is a potent storytelling technique, which is why fairy tales and rhymes often focus on what might go wrong if we choose the wrong path. We also see this in oppositional democratic politics, where you have a position of power and a party thats in opposition, who are there to point out the mistakes that might happen if we follow the rules of whats been put in place by the leading power. Its also found at the center of things like protests. There is a more nuanced form of Dont Futurism emerging today, which focuses on the externalities and implications of the things were bringing about in the world, such as how new services and technologies we embed in society will age.
The problems with Dont Futurism are numerous. They force us into oppositional, divided factions. Theyre often polemic and call for immediate and often impossible action. And they dont integrate well with the people or industries they want to change. Dont Futurism is difficult because it often wants to be. Finding a balance between dont ideas and actionable change can be tricky.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
The return-to-office debate sees no end in sight. Workers still want flexible workand drag their feet complying with RTO, it was reported this week. Some workers have suspected such policies have been a way of companies saying: Dont like it? Quit.
Turns out, maybe they are.
A recent Fortune article, citing a 2024 survey of more than 1,500 U.S. managers, found that a quarter of C-suite executives hoped for some voluntary turnover after introducing an RTO policy. One in five HR leaders went further, admitting their stricter office requirements were designed to push staff out.
So when the article started making the rounds on Reddit last week, the general lack of surprise was telling, and renewed discussion around worker suspicion that RTO goes beyond fostering collaboration.
This belongs on the no shit sherlock subreddit, one user wrote. This should have been pretty obvious to any person with the ability to think objectively, another added. One suggested, The rest just arent admitting it yet.
Their skepticism isnt misplaced. In fact, business leaders across the U.S. told the Federal Reserves Beige Book theyre banking on in-office requirements to quietly and cheaply trim headcount, all without having to play the bad guy.
More than half of Fortune 100 companies now have a full-time office requirement, and research shows nearly 3 in 10 companies will demand five days a week in the office by the end of 2025. Thats despite almost half of workers warning theyd quit if remote work disappeared.
To some, the ability to work from home is a perk equivalent to 8% of their salary, and not something they are prepared to give up without a fight.
But those threatening to quit may have less bargaining power than they believe. A mass exodus triggered by RTO might seem like it wouldnt be in companies best interests, yet in fact, the opposite may be true. Forcing disgruntled employees to quit provides companies looking to reduce their workforce with an easy out, all without the need to foot the severance packages and bad press tied to layoffs.
Rather than cleverly killing two birds with one stone, however, RTO mandates, as a workforce reduction tactic, often simply drains talent along with morale among remaining employees.
At a time where employees are already disengaged at work, theres something to be said for a business strategy thats all stickand no carrot.
AI fluency is quickly becoming the new leadership divide: Some executives are already embedding it into strategy, while others are still asking what it means. The gap is wideningand its shaping who gets hired to lead.
Thats why AI fluency is becoming a top priority in leadership searches. Not deep technical mastery, but a practical understanding of how these tools work and where they apply. Companies want leaders who arent just talking about transformation but are actively engaged in it. People whove run pilots, evaluated risks, collaborated with product and tech, or led adoption efforts in their function.
They dont need to be engineers. But they do need to know what these tools can (and cant) doand how to help others use them responsibly.
How executives are actually using AI
Executives at the forefront are already putting AI to work in meaningful, strategic ways. According to Salesforce, top-tier leaders are leveraging AI for critical tasks: running high-stakes market analysis, stress testing new business ideas before launch, and anticipating market shifts before they happen.
A recent TechRadar piece reports that 74% of executives now trust AIs input more than that of colleagues, with 44% willing to let it override their own decisions. AI has become more than a dashboardits a boardroom copilot.
Behind the scenes, back-office leaders are increasing AI spending: 92% of executives surveyed plan to ramp up investments in AI over the next three years, and 55% expect a boost of at least 10%. Yet execution is uneven. A recent IBM study found that while CEOs expect AI investment growth to more than double in the next two years, only 25% of AI initiatives have delivered expected ROIand just 16% have scaled enterprise-wide. Similarly, PwC found that while 79% of senior executives are adopting AI agents, many see success only when implementations are tied directly to measurable productivity gains in targeted areas.
But high adoption doesnt always mean high impact. MIT researchers recently found that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable ROI, often because theyre launched without clear objectives or integration into core workflows. Meanwhile, another study warns of workslopa proliferation of low-quality output from poorly managed AI usage.
These findings underscore a growing reality: AI fluency among leaders isnt just a nice-to-haveits the difference between pilots that fizzle and initiatives that scale. Leaders who understand both the capabilities and constraints of these tools are far better equipped to unlock value while avoiding the hidden costs of misuse.
What leaders who use AI well do differently
Heres what separates AI-fluent executives from the rest:
Hands-on experimentationThese leaders gain firsthand experience with generative AIunderstanding not just the techs capabilities, but its limitations.
Visible, scalable fluencyHarvard Business Publishings new study shows that employees with fluency arent just dabblingthey integrate AI into daily workflows. In “best-in-class” organizations, 98% of AI-fluent users are confident in using tools and report significant team performance gains.
Strategic, not siloed, useAI isn’t just owned by the CTO. Leaders from across the organizationfrom chief human resources officers (CHROs) to CFOsare embedding AI literacy into their domains, turning it from a technical specialty into leadership capability.
Intentional oversightEven when AI is applied, responsible use is rare: Infosys found that 95% of executives experienced AI mishaps, and only 2% of firms meet responsible-use standards.
Dont just hire fasterhire toward the future
Most companies today arent ignoring AItheyre trying to figure out how to keep up. They know they cant afford to fall behind, especially when competitors are investing aggressively in AI across operations. The challenge is finding people who can lead that shiftnot just within their function, but across the business.
Thats the conversation Im having with clients right now. Not how do we hire someone fast? but how do we hire someone who can take us where we want to go?
Takeaways for talent teams and leaders
Screen for real fluency. Ask candidates to share where theyve deployed tools, navigated roadblocks, coled adoption, and managed both opportunity and risk.
Favor handson experience, not academic abstraction. AI fluency is demonstrated, not talked aboutfrom pilot artifacts to team processes.
Insist on governance and oversight. Pair fluency with accountability. Use AI, yesbut responsibly.
Prioritize curiosity and adaptability. Leaders dont need to master every tool, but they do need to stay agile, ask questions, and foster a culture of experimentation. AI will keep evolving, and so must the people leading its adoption.
Leaders arent expected to be coders. But they must know how to marshal AI, translate insight, and guide adoptionbalanced with judgment. The future of leadership is not running from change. Its defining it.
