How do you imagine the future while surviving the present?

Plus: We're hiring in Rwanda

"We keep being asked to imagine the future while surviving the present."

When someone said this at a Brink-hosted event in Cape Town earlier this year, the whole room went quiet. It was the kind of quiet you get when someone's just named the thing everyone's been dancing around.

We've been hearing versions of this everywhere lately. From Kigali, to London and beyond. The people trying to fix the world's biggest problems are running on fumes, while the very systems they're trying to change seem specifically designed to grind them down.

So what we really want to know is, how do you keep going when the work of change is literally breaking the changemakers?

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📡 Signals Detected

Just how widespread burnout has become among those working to create change:

• 59% of young changemakers have experienced burnout since they started their initiatives, according to ChangemakerXchange research. Many fall into the trap of the 'heropreneur' mindset - that seductive idea that as a founder, you should be able to carry everything alone.

• Two thirds of climate academics are considering leaving the field entirely. A 2024 study found they felt abandoned by their institutions and senior colleagues. Meanwhile, the first Climate Burnout Report discovered "very high levels of overall burnout" across climate and environmental professionals.

• EdTech entrepreneurs are drowning in hustle culture, with the balance between innovation and exhaustion becoming increasingly impossible to maintain, especially for younger changemakers in the education space.

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🤷 The 'So What?': Exhaustion is the enemy of imagination

When teams are running on empty, they stop experimenting. They stick with what they know, even when what they know isn't working.

We've watched brilliant, creative people - the same ones who once proposed wild, ambitious solutions - start defaulting to the safest, most incremental ideas. Not because they've lost their vision, but because they've lost their energy. And when you're exhausted, 'safe' feels like survival.

This creates a brutal loop. The safer you play it, the less impact you have. The less impact you have, the more frustrated you become. The more frustrated you become, the harder you push. The harder you push... well, you see where this goes.

And yet… Hard things are hard, and that's never going to change.

We all know that meaningful change requires grit. But there's a difference between sustainable struggle and slow-motion collapse. So how do we build stamina for the long haul without burning out along the way?

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🛠️ Creating spaces that sustain rather than drain

Burnout isn’t just a symptom of working too hard. It's about working in systems that seem actively designed to break you.

We've been lucky enough to work with innovators who are tackling some of the world’s most pressing and complex problems, and the ones who don't burn out aren't necessarily those who are working fewer hours. But they are working in different conditions.

The best interventions we've seen don’t lean on meditation apps or wellness retreats, instead they look to change the social architecture around the work itself.

Peer support is a huge part of this. Spaces where someone can actually say "I think I'm failing" without fear of reprisal, WhatsApp groups where people can share real struggles alongside the wins, and monthly check-ins where there’s more checking in than checking up (i.e. people ask "How are you holding up?" instead of "How's business?").

Or circuit breakers: mandatory pause moments when someone with authority can say "You need to stop before you crash." We’ve learned from experience that you can’t expect people to step back and pause voluntarily, even when they desperately need to.

One of the most impactful tools we've used are "energy audits" - a way of mapping out what in your work gives you energy back, versus what just takes it away. Sounds obvious, but most people have never actually done it. Once you see it on paper, the patterns are usually pretty stark, and often more changeable than you'd expect.

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“If you do not plan to rest, then it will definitely hit you.”

When we designed the Hanga Sexual & Reproductive Health programme to support startups tackling maternal health and gender-based violence across Sub-Saharan Africa, we knew we couldn't just throw people into the deep end and hope they'd figure it out. These are some of the hardest problems you can work on.

So we built the whole thing around ‘learning out loud’ sessions. Structured time where people had to pause and actually think about what they were doing, instead of just grinding forward on autopilot (kind of like the mental equivalent of ‘ninety degree turns’ casino designers try so hard to eliminate). The coaches weren't there to fix problems - they were there to ask better questions and create enough psychological safety that people could be honest about what wasn't working.

We’ll let someone who was a part of the first cohort of Hanga innovators explain what a difference this kind of thing makes:

"For me, burnout was a very shocking experience; a very physical reaction. I actually thought I was sick or coming down with something. But, of course, when I stopped and assessed everything, I realised I had been pushing myself too hard. And that was a shock to me, because I had worked as a doctor, I’d spent many nights on call, doing my internship… And I did not experience that level of intense burnout then.

”Speaking to my mentor gave me a moment to vent, but also to look at the challenge and break it down into small, simpler problems to be solved. It was also a chance to speak to some of my peers who were also going through similar pressures and to find out what they were doing. Those sessions are crucial because they purposely take you away from the grind. You actually have to pause and have a conversation. And if you do not plan to rest, then it will definitely hit you."

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📚 Brain Food

A few useful links for anyone looking to create more sustainable approaches to change:

• 🎧 Listen: Burnout Is Everyone's Problem Adam Grant explores how high-pressure workplaces have figured out how to fight exhaustion by redesigning jobs and changing cultures, not just telling people to practise self-care.

• 📺 Watch: Climate Activism Without Burnout featuring Dr. Laurie Santos discussing scientifically-validated strategies for sustaining activism without sacrificing mental health.

• 👤 Follow: Dr. Lucy Bird, whose PhD was centered on “political despair and the impacts it has on personal well-being and engagement in political actions.”

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💬 We are hiring

We’re looking for an Innovation Lead to be based in Rwanda, for an initial 12 month contract (with the potential to go permanent).

We’re after a strategic leader, ecosystem builder, and powerhouse connector who can drive Brink’s presence and impact in Rwanda. You’ll be the force behind our growing work there, shaping our country strategy, nurturing key relationships, and steering delivery across our programmes.

If you think you can be the face of Brink Rwanda and lead efforts to position us as a bold, credible, and collaborative innovation partner in the region, then click here.

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This month’s mystery links

Your reward for reading down this far:

• Which gets more views in a year, a TikTok video or a UN report?.

• Could art be the missing ingredient when it comes to creating better policies?

• Related: Could stories help us expose harms – and hold powerful corporations accountable?

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