Burnout is easy to recognize because it is loud: impossible workloads, exhaustion, anxiety and the feeling that everything is on fire. Rust-out is quieter. It can happen when capable people are chronically underused, excluded from meaningful decisions, given work that no longer stretches them or they stay in roles where their expertise is acknowledged but rarely activated. From the outside, the job may look stable. On the inside, curiosity, confidence, and professional identity begin to corrode.
This talk gives experienced professionals language for distinguishing rust-out from ordinary boredom, burnout, a temporary slump, or a genuine desire to leave a field. It explores the warning signs: doing competent work without caring about the outcome, withdrawing from visibility, resenting less-experienced colleagues who receive better opportunities, collecting credentials without changing the work and fantasizing about quitting without knowing what should replace the job.
Rather than thinking that resignation as the only answer, the talk offers a recovery sequence: diagnose the source, restore challenge, rebuild agency, reconnect with people who see your value and run small career experiments. Or, honestly cute and run of that is the best options.
Attendees will leave with a practical way to decide whether the problem is the role, the environment, the profession or the season of life. The goal is not to convince everyone to stay. It is to help people avoid making a permanent decision in response to a condition they have not accurately named.

Talk Outline
• The difference between burn out and rust out.
• The symptoms people misidentify for burnout and rust out and how to identify them
• The hidden costs: confidence erosion, skill atrophy, cynicism and identity loss
• The recovery sequence: how to decide if you want to reconnect or bounce
• The decision point: repair the role, redesign the career or leave deliberately

Four Key Takeaways
• A diagnostic vocabulary for separating rust-out from burnout and temporary boredom.
• A audit of challenge, agency, visibility, learning and relevance.
• Small recovery experiments to try before making an irreversible career move.
• A clearer standard for deciding whether to stay, reshape the role or leave.

Why Jen Blatz Is Qualified to Speak on This Topic
Jen Blatz has worked across multiple creative and research disciplines and has experienced the changing expectations placed on senior UX professionals. As a Principal Experience Researcher and frequent conference speaker, she can connect the personal reality of career stagnation with concrete ways to rebuild influence, challenge and professional momentum. Having been a victim of both burn out and rust out, Jen can speak to this topic directly and help others determine where they fall and what they should do moving forward.