[Massplanners] [EXTERNAL]Re: Planner Burnout

Tue Mar 8 10:14:11 EST 2022

Hi Nathan,

Thank you for the supportive response. I especially love #1. I think those of us who are inclined to enjoy challenges also have a hard time saying no to things, but it's as important as saying yes to things. I'm trying to practice that more. "I can't help you with this now, but so and so can" or "I can't help you with this immediately but I can next month" or just "No this isn't something I can help you with". It's really hard, especially if it's something I want to do, but I'm realizing that I can't do anything at all if I burn out.

And congratulations on your career switch into government. It's weird, hard work that's definitely hard for the public to wrap their head around at times.

Mariah Kurtz (she/her)

Assistant Town Planner

Town of Erving

12 East Main Street

Erving, Massachusetts 01344

Phone: (413) 422-2800 ext. 1108 |  Online: www.Erving-Ma.gov<http://www.erving-ma.gov/>  | Facebook: Town of Erving<https://www.facebook.com/townoferving>

When writing or responding, please remember that the Secretary of State has determined that email is a public record, is subject to the Public Records Law, M.G.L. c. 66, § 10, and covered by Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521. This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or believe that you have received the communication in error, you are strictly prohibited from printing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or otherwise using this communication.
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From: MassPlanners <massplanners-bounces at masscptc.org> on behalf of Nathan Chung via MassPlanners <massplanners at masscptc.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 6, 2022 11:53 PM
To: massplanners at masscptc.org <massplanners at masscptc.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [Massplanners] Planner Burnout

Hi Mariah,
I commend you for taking the risk to open up and write about a very important topic that people might be afraid to talk about. Planning in real-life is full of messy human relationships and emotions, not so dry and rigid like the regulations and some literature would have you believe. I also went to the UMass planning program. I recently started working in the Northampton Office of Planning and Sustainability as the CDBG admin, supporting our director and community development planner. I previously worked in IT for several years and briefly dabbled in physical work like restaurants and farms. The lessons from those experiences helped me with my job even if I am a newbie who still has a lot to learn. I will share some ideas that may help reduce stress and improve relationships. Mainly, my suggestion is to try to remove problems rather than add potential solutions and to find some commonality with people, which might not always be possible. Details are below. Take them with a big grain of salt. And another vote for taking breaks and going outside. Many Americans are Vitamin D deficient.

1. Via negativa: This idea comes from theology, but people have expanded it into a general approach of solving problems through subtraction rather than addition. You have limited time, energy, and cognitive capacity. You might be getting pulled in all kinds of different tasks, volunteer orgs, and publications. Human knee jerk reaction to complexity and struggles is to add more processes, documents, superfoods, and productivity tools, but the via negativa approach questions the wisdom of that approach. You might be better off to slow down, reflect, and simplify (saying no to some commitments and reducing your activities and inputs) to move faster and stay sane over the long-run. There have been stories of organizations becoming more efficient by combining departments or simplifying their focus. In my work, I had to fill out several forms and spreadsheets repeating the same information. This was a huge source of stress for me as they took a long time to fill them out and were error prone. Finding a mistake meant I had to correct it in several different places. I spent some time gradually automating in Excel to auto-generate most of the forms and sheets and also consolidated some of them.

2. Seeing the legitimacy in people's concerns and finding some commonality: This is more speculative as I am yet to witness this being done well in a real-life government or non-gov meeting, although it comes up a lot in conflict resolution literature. I think with COVID and numerous other challenges Americans are facing, people have become more polarized and siloed, opting to believe in simpler linear narratives rather than seeing the messy reality. What concerned me when I used to watch infotainment TV (regardless of its political orientation and claims of being factual, any news show with a specific person's name in the title is a dead giveaway as infotainment) were their tendency to ridicule and caricaturize people that did not agree with their main ideas. Learning about people's struggles and reading some jolting literature (Chris Arnade's Dignity is an example with a big warning) made me take the view that even if I may strongly disagree with somebody's specific ideas and solutions, their underlying concerns and anxiety are legitimate. If somebody gets up during a town meeting and says, "The Reptile People are taking over our town!" I would disagree, but if somebody says, "A small number of people with disproportionate power and possibly malicious intent are doing things behind the scenes to control how we live," I am pretty confident 95% of people will agree with that statement to some degree. If public processes can somehow allow for civil dialogues to dig in deeper rather than 3-minutes podium time and shouting matches, maybe we will get things done more easily, but that's conjecture. I question the effectiveness of some charrettes because they are asking people to be experts in domains where they have no experience, i.e. designing roads and re-writing the zoning code. But they are experts in the lived experience and can verbalize their ideas well if given the right questions. If I ever get a chance to run a meeting, it would be interesting to ask people to imagine a better town and visually draw out their ideas.

It seems like you have good people to support you. Hope you can find some relief and progress..

Nathan Chung, Grants Administrator
Planning & Sustainability
City of Northampton
When writing or responding, please remember that the Secretary of State has determined that email is a public record, is subject to the Public Records Law, M.G.L. c. 66, § 10, and covered by Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521. This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or believe that you have received the communication in error, you are strictly prohibited from printing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or otherwise using this communication.
When writing or responding, please remember that the Secretary of State has determined that email is a public record, is subject to the Public Records Law, M.G.L. c. 66, § 10, and covered by Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2521. This communication may contain privileged or other confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient or believe that you have received the communication in error, you are strictly prohibited from printing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or otherwise using this communication.
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