Rebel, forget burnout for a second. Rust out is its quieter, sneakier cousin, and it is just as damaging. AMS coach Paulina Folaron, aka the Solutions Sorceress Supreme, joins Fab to unpack the anti-hustle trend taking over Gen Z’s corner of TikTok, and why rust out vs burnout is a conversation marketers need to have.
About Paulina Folaron
Paulina Folaron is an operations and digital marketing strategist and self-styled “Solutions Sorceress Supreme”, who brings a bit of witchy, a bit of whimsy and a lot of anti-hustle energy to everything she does. She’s an AMS coach, helping people scale their businesses and build sustainable, analytics-driven marketing without the burnout.
- Website: paulinafsolutions.com
- LinkedIn: Click here
- Instagram: Click here
Burnout’s Lesser-Known Twin: What Rust Out Actually Means
Rust out is burnout’s opposite number: instead of being overworked, you are underused.
- Rust out means being underutilised, left feeling listless and undervalued because nobody is developing the skills you have
- Paulina links it to indiscriminate automation adoption at work: staff feed a system, take the output and lose the chance to use their skills, leaving them under-stimulated rather than overstretched
- A lack of impact and a lack of satisfaction both do real damage, to wellbeing and to career progression, not just to how you feel on a Monday
Why The Old Hustle Playbook Doesn’t Work Anymore
The hustle-harder advice most of us grew up with was built for a different economy, and Gen Z has noticed.
Millennials did what they were told and still ended up disillusioned, struggling to get promoted or save for a house.
Paulina argues the “work harder, get ahead” playbook rested on economics that have since been shown not to hold up.
Gen Z has watched that play out a generation up, and clocked that jobs now come with less security than their parents had.
What Sustainable Performance Actually Looks Like For Marketers
Marketers carry a particular kind of pressure, so the fix has to be practical.
- Marketers are constantly proving that what they do is not “just sales”, on top of the real relationship-building and systems work
- Reclaiming the time automation frees up for creative and critical thinking is the opportunity, but you have to make space for it deliberately, not leave it to chance
Paulina’s practical fix for rust out: find a physical way to see your impact, like gold stars, stickers or a screenshots folder of wins and kind words, because impact you can’t see stops feeling real
If you want more from Paulina, she also joined us to debate whether a $142K influencer marketing degree is worth it.
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