Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

I found great joy in doing simple physical labor and assembly line tasks last month. Mental labor is more draining than you would otherwise think. In donating my physical labor, I connected more strongly to my local community.

I volunteered at the WTBBL (Washington Talking Books and Brail Library) last month for a day. The four of us in my volunteer group were all from Liberty Mutual.

We were tasked to remove stickers from hundreds of ‘physical audiobook’ plastic boxes, clean them, and re-sticker them. I haven’t had this fun doing physical work in a long time. It was methodical and repetitive. It involved working with other people in an assembly line. It needed enough focus to not be boring, but simple enough to talk over. It was easy to practice the same motion, and make immediate improvements to the process. The feedback loop between trying a new approach and the outcome was tight. The simplicity meant there was little space to optimize, but the gains were easy.

The person overseeing us was impressed, so they gave us something else to do. We completed it on short order. They considered giving us work meant for the later group of volunteers. Instead, they sent us away and thanked us for being so meticulous and quick. They had reminded us that it was not a competition, and there was no need to speed up our process. We just wanted to get things done efficiently, and get as much done as possible.

It was such a fun day! I felt quite accomplished that day. It felt amazing to have volunteered at a non-profit, of course. But I also got to use my hand and provide physical labor, while engaging with other folks throughout the process. There was a strong sense of camaraderie in the group.

Such simple but satisfying days far and few in-between for those of us who work ‘on the computer’.

For folks who provide intellectual labor in large organizations, the relationship between our contribution and the outcome can feel detached. Efforts can feel unrelated to the results, which seem unrelated to the original goals. The understanding of value creation is abstracted away. It’s challenging because it can feel like no value is being created. Remote workers have trouble creating strong bonds with coworkers. Jobs can feel strictly transactional. That transactional feeling doesn’t sustain long-term relationships, it doesn’t encourage loyalty towards work.

Situating yourself becomes harder, and opportunities for growth and better efficiency are much harder to understand. The feedback loop grows so large and loose, it almost stops being a ‘loop’.

People stop caring.

But why does that matter?

When people stop caring, simple processes become complicated. Efficient workflows become inefficient. Things slow down, communication seems to lose its ‘chemistry’. All of this happens for no clear, obvious reason. The gears of the great machine creak, as if by ghostly presence. You see the outcomes, but the symptoms are invisible.

Dan Sinker writes about the Who Cares era. He gives the example of Chicago Sun-Times a few months ago when they accidentally published a list of ai-generated (fake) titles for book recommendations. The writer didn’t care, neither did the editor, neither did the business people, or the production people. Nobody discovered the error for two days, so presumably the readers didn’t care either.

He reviewed hundreds of essays for an application process. Scores and scores of AI-generated essays. Repeated, cliched, boring, and disheartening. He felt crushed. Until…

Until he read an application written entirely by a person. He found delight, joy, and sadness at every turn of these carefully-crafted essays.

He appreciated the humanity in those essays. He felt consoled by the fact they were written by people who cared.

In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care, he says.

Dan’s argument revolves around the feeling of despondence caused by genAI. He talks about the feeling of impending doom due to fear of being replaced by AI.

But why would anybody think AI would replace them? Because management keep claiming that! That AI will replace such and such percent of the workflow. They predict a future where a few humans will tune hundreds of ‘ai agents’ who will then go on to do the work of thousands. What an awful thing to tell your employees!

First, even for the management class, such claims are in a world of rarefied absurdity. And second, even if it were somehow true, mp good can come out of demoralizing your existing workforce. It’s one of the more counterproductive things for management to do.

It reminds me of a client that I once worked for. In response to the large groups of engineers rushing to leave the company, they called an engineering all-hands meeting. In it, the engineers were reminded to – I’m quoting here – not act like pampered princesses, and just get back to work. The engineer count went from twenty-eight to four in six months.

People – generally – want to do work that creates value, and bring happiness to those around them. They want to make positive changes in their communities, for their company, and their co-workers. For many, the very definition of productivity is defined by these values, and not necessarily increasing revenue, or getting a certain number of tickets done.

I’m in executive boards and volunteer committees of several non-profits. Why do I want to give my energy and time to them¹? Why do I (and so many others) volunteer at local parks, food banks, and other charitable organizations?

Because we care. It feels great to care. To bring positive change in our communities, to help those in need, feels incredible. It feels good to create visible, often immediate, progress in the world. It feels fantastic to make others happy, with no expectation of getting anything in return².

That’s why company like mine encourage volunteering, and reward giving back to the community. My company has a 1-1 match on charitable donations too, which doubles my contributions. It’s to encourage and further grow the feeling of ‘mattering’. The point is to give reasons for your employees and coworkers to care more. To lead them to care about their coworkers, and care about the world.

We’re back to where we started from.

If you’re in a leadership position, it’s your responsibility to be proactive about making people care. They need to reminded that they’ve got a skin in the game. They need to be told their work matters, and they’re creative positive change in the world. Tighten the feedback loop of actions and outcomes. Make it obviously transparent how their work contributes to the company’s bottomline – and how it impacts customer positively.

Make people care, they truly want to believe, they want to matter.