Substack: Wicked Problems Defy Simple Solutions

Don't let them bring you down.

If you have spent even a year or two in this profession, I bet you have felt a familiar, exhausting sense of déjà vu. We keep having the same arguments about entry-level education, whether we belong in hospitals or high-end spas. We argue about franchise pay and work conditions, the definition of “professionalism,” and we wonder vaguely (but never actually measure or study!) what might be behind the staggering rate of early-career burnout.

Our struggles as massage therapists do not stem from a lack of trying. They stem from an inability and an unwillingness to look at the size of the problem and all of its unseemly tentacles.

We are living and working inside a wicked problem and wicked problems will never be solved by effort alone.