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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.
Category:
E-Commerce
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.
Category:
E-Commerce
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.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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