Jeffrey Kursonis

Karma: 447

Jeffrey Kursonis built and co-built quite a number of non-profits in New York City, including The Haven, an arts and altruism collective with 300 people gathering weekly for ten years in Manhattan. A multicultural and altruistic faith community in Harlem, still going today. The New York City New Sanctuary Movement, one of two main hubs of the national network of faith communities giving sanctuary protection to undocumented families being pursued by Federal Immigration Law Enforcement. It’s a long list that formed a network of sorts.

After my work in NYC, a nascent national organization, Emergent Village, tapped me to lead their early growing network of local cohorts seeking to organize progressive religious leaders. I formed a team and we built it up to over 100 US cities, as well as many regional gatherings and other movement training and organizing (extremely similar to CEA). This “emerging church” movement changed the face of American religion by directly moving thousands of religious leaders and their congregations to the left, spawned a whole publishing genre, helped elect Obama, helped influence our Federal same sex marriage legal structure and sadly became a focal point of the conservative backlash unleashed by Trumpism. This is the second and biggest network I built.

My third network requires some discretion as it was built across a major authoritarian country and ended after a combination of Covid and government crackdowns.

As a side note, Jeffrey is no longer religious but still deeply appreciates the proven training ground religion provides. Here is a video we produced about the national cohort network, note my name as producer in the end credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-oaU29Z4dg

Jeffrey has been an active EA’er for over two years now, doing the Intro and Advanced Fellowships and working as a Meta-Moderator for Virtual Program trainings for new facilitators and actively posting on the forum. I recently applied to be on the CEA Virtual Programs new Advisory Board.

The very active EA Anywhere #role-film-and-tv group has been meeting weekly or biweekly with a number of subgroups working on various projects. It’s become something of a mini incubator already producing a number of new org’s and other smaller projects. Jeffrey has been an important organizer and momentum builder in the group. Expect to hear of a number of new inititatives arising out of the group.

Jeffrey Kursonis 11 Mar 2026 16:57 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: High Impact Defense—a request for strategic takes
A few comments. EA has not been good at bringing in career veterans. So I would focus more on early or mid-career officers. I would love for you to find a niche where you could bring in Generals, but that’s a stretch culturally at this point.

The reason it is so hard to find a job in EA is that EA hasn’t expanded as much as its promise would seem. It should be rapidly expanding and creating plenty of jobs for all the new and excited joiners. The reality is they join with excitement then hit the wall of how hard it is to get a job or funding. The smallness of EA is causing this problem. Bear this in mind, you’ll be giving newcomers a pep talk right before they run off to hit the wall. Pray for reform, more openness, less applications and just throw open the gates and let everyone in (ie. the reality of how movements work).

Higher officers might be better as founders, consider that model and make funding connections.

Good luck and love the last sentence about the spelling of defence. GSTQ. (Although I don’t actually hold to that since I’m American).

Jeffrey Kursonis 11 Mar 2026 15:46 UTC
10 points
5 ∶ 1
on: Effective Altruism Will Be Great Again
“My real issue is that EA in all its forms is still so small.” …as a technical expert I couldn’t agree more.

Movements aren’t gated, like business or fundamentalism. Unspoken yet de facto elitism, applications for EAGs, all have kept the EA movement a tiny fraction of what it could be. More funding than any movement has ever known (because science nerds feel comfy here) have kept it alive. In the past the sense that, “Wow, if I wanted to do some good this group might fund me” did launch some good stuff, but far more hit all the de facto walls and shrunk off to business or trad philanthropy.

A renewal, making it great again, will only come with some new ideas and more openness. That cost effectiveness is the main thing in social entrepreneurship, the very beating heart of ascendant EA has to accommodate some new friends and be changed by them.

Jeffrey Kursonis 25 Feb 2026 17:19 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Mental Health: Large, Neglected, and More Cost-Effective Than We Think?
This is really great to see you are doing the work within EA. We could add to this that depression is now the #1 global cause of ill health & disability, more than injuries or any disease it takes people out of life and job functionality.

And it got to number one because it is rapidly increasing so much that now it’s on track within some years to become the #1 cause of death of all health issues*.

I think it’s worth saying another way. Depression disables people so they can’t go to work or take care of their family and the WHO says this disabler is the biggest one in the whole world. Depression puts people on the path to death and on the way to death it disables you first. This crept up on us and we didn’t realize it as altruists.

I feel it’s like when some teens get killed at a dangerous intersection and finally the town puts up a stop sign, and we all comment “Why did we have to wait for these kids to get killed before we acted”?

Mental Health is clearly a coming tragedy that’s been neglected more than almost any…and we have very clear tractable solutions that just haven’t been used. It’s the perfect ITN framework vector towards action. EA should get out on the front end of it like we have other cause areas. The team that wrote this post are the main ones in EA that recognize this and I hope we’ll all join them.

*note: raw google searches will find some confusion because blindness is also sometimes called the number one disability but they are different. Blindness is a functional issue you can be born with. Depression is the biggest ill health leading to disability.

Jeffrey Kursonis 24 Dec 2025 15:42 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Join our EA Coworking Hub in Southeast Asia this Feb-April!
This looks awesome guys. I spent a year in Vietnam about half of it in Da Nang. Much better air than Saigon! Most people rent a moped, which I think they call a motorbike or scooter. Plenty of young expats around trying to find themselves, a great chance to evangelize altruism. My dad lost a leg there in the American War, so I felt a weird bond over our shared history. I found the Vietnamese warm and hospitable at first, but hard to crack getting closer to, to do so I think would take years and fluency. So keep expectations in line.

Another interesting thing and a potential project is that as a communist country they’ve never had a history of Civil Society, that “third sector” (same with China), so the idea of people banding together to address social ills just isn’t a thing, that’s the job of the government, and doing so in the past could get you killed or jailed because it would be offensive to the government, you’re essentially saying, “Hey loser gov since you’re not doing a good job we’ll do it”, something you just couldn’t do in the past.

When I was there in 2018 the government was more chill and seemed to be slowly evolving...but they still hadn’t gotten around to creating laws to support Civil Society, like making donations tax deductible...something we so take for granted, but it’s an actual thing a society has to decide to do. So it makes it hard on nonprofits because its much harder to fundraise without that very helpful tax deduction law. And just in general the population doesn’t understand the idea of giving to charity. But I hear now, in mirroring China’s moves toward harder authoritarianism (Something Vietnam is known for doing, following the lead of China), they have begun cracking down some on nonprofits, jailing some leaders, making life harder in general...so sad to hear.

When I was there I spent time with some charities and life was hard for them, but now I hear it’s getting worse. So my suggestion is to just have conversations with locals you feel some trust with about that whole thing, it will probably be a new thing to many of them, you can share the long tradition of charity work in most of the world and just educate them on it. I’d just be a bit careful on only bringing that up if you have trust...some people might be more nationalist and not want to talk about that, but probably those people wouldn’t tend to want to talk to you as a foreigner anyways.

Don’t mistake the warm hospitality up front for openness to Western ideas, the Vietnamese are a very proud people, as you’ll agree seeing their hard work and commitment to their homeland, so communicate new ideas knowing they exist in a competition for merit, not automagically correct because you’re Western forbears told you so. When it comes to altruism, which is a form of love for strangers, the highest of human acts, it does win the competition over using power to control people, but you have to play the game with full offense and defense, not just expecting them to fold easily.

Have a great winter.

Jeffrey Kursonis 4 Dec 2025 5:52 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Announcing the new AIM CEO!
Congrats to all of you for accomplishing a hard thing. Excited to see someone who’s done it all at AIM become the best choice, so much easier to hit the ground running. Seems like your impact will be getting ever more ambitious, and your charity more entrepreneurable, or your entrepreneuring more charitable, as well as your science oh so charitable (and healthy).

Jeffrey Kursonis 26 Nov 2025 19:34 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Scaling Evidence-Based Mental Health Care Through Government Systems: Vida Plena’s 2026 Plan
On a scale from 0 to 100, how much do improvements in mental health translate into reductions in overall human suffering?
Currently depression is the number one health disability globally and on track to be the number one killer in the near future, killing more than cancer, heart attacks, hunger, etc. Now is the time to get ahead of it. Also diminishment of individuals and their communities and productivity on the path to death. For example, a depressed mother stops taking care of her family well…if they have to walk miles to take the kids to a health clinic, now that doesn’t happen and the children’s health goes down. Many of us weren’t paying attention as depression grew to now rival the top human killers.

Jeffrey Kursonis 5 Nov 2025 15:09 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Will Welfareans Get to Experience the Future?
I hope you have a billion years to evolve your Welfareans. Since humans already have that behind us and our evolution has been going pretty good and faster in the last 200 years maybe in a hundred or so we’ll be getting pretty close to your imagination of Welfareans.

My thesis is that the core driving bit of humans is love, but that most of what love is, has not fully unfolded yet, like a flower not yet fully blossomed. So we just keep pushing forward, especially on benefitting others (like EA) and the unfolding will continue.

Jeffrey Kursonis 6 Oct 2025 16:35 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ThomNorman’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
This is a heartening reply. I’m also glad you put yours in and got in. Let me ask you from your observations, when you say diverse, could you expand on that. Is it really all mixed up or is it mostly 25 year olds and one 37 year old. Was there anyone post 45? Your point about it being more doable for younger people is a good one, but I think we mostly are known about by young people. There’s plenty of 35-55 year olds in career transitions that if they knew would apply, and often they have some security so the transition is affordable. I’d love to hear more about how actively AIM pursues them. I’d be glad to update.

Jeffrey Kursonis 4 Oct 2025 1:35 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Ben Stewart’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
Yes in publishing stories there’s plenty of suspect motives. But really I’m basing this on my own personal experience in seeing so many not obvious leaders blow everyone away and the obvious winners not at all so guaranteed to succeed. So many get into high level schools for reasons beyond their personal talent, and so many others blossom late. The pool of people enabled by society/parents to get into elite schools is much smaller than the huge pool of average grade, lower income people who didn’t give a shite about school when they’re were 18 and later blossom with their tough background giving them huge grit and ambition. EA tends to fail to see this to their diminishment. Spreadsheet criteria doesn’t capture grit and ambition. Mentoring pipelines do.

Jeffrey Kursonis 3 Oct 2025 1:44 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 3
in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
I appreciate what you’re saying. If you want to be EA orthodox. I’m talking about evolving EA and changing some things.

It is most assuredly NOT expensive to run a mentoring program. It’s a hugely significant pipeline of candidates coming in that you are getting a much deeper insight into than just a short application process, and it’s value greatly exceeds its cost. All you have to do is spread it to all the members of AIM, rather than pay for a new department, ie. each member of AIM takes on mentoring a few people. That’s great for the whole org and infuses it with exactly the culture a charity enabling org should have.

As for the quota, isn’t that self set, so the budget is there to choose 25 people. If instead you choose only 20 because your criteria rejected the rest, now you have a budget excess. Don’t do that, it’s far better to take a risk on the five you weren’t sure of, because the budget is already there, and if even one of them turned out to be a hidden gem, you got them instead of losing them.

In hits based thinking, which is an EA staple, that’s what you do, you sign 25 bands and only a few make a hit record, but that’s enough to support the whole process. The point is that the researcher’s in AIMs back room choosing the cause priorities are most definitely not the arbiters able to pick the best hits. They can’t do it alone, they never will, and it was a fools errand to think they could. Everyone knows there’s no magic formula for picking a hit record, you just have to sign a bunch of bands and let them go crazy and see what happens. EA is effectively saying, “No. We think we can use science and spreadsheets to pick the hit songs”. Nope. Doesn’t work (world too big). But most definitely get some people in the back room working on that (Go researchers, we love you!), just don’t let that be the only thing you do...you also have to go out to the clubs and see what the kids are dancing to. (ie. bring in more veteran field workers into the process, have a mentoring pipeline, change your criteria a lot to include more and reject less, rather than just researchers in the back room).

Both in science, in music, in movies, nobody knows where the next hit will come from, so get broader and accept more.

Jeffrey Kursonis 3 Oct 2025 1:20 UTC
−9 points
1 ∶ 5
in reply to: MvK🔸’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
Yes, my apologies on you not understanding some of my writing, I don’t speak STEM, I’m an arts & humanities human. I’m committed to science, but I don’t speak the language as many here, kind of like a long term charity worker overseas who fails to master the local language.

But this opens another interesting doorway; EA needs an infusion of maybe 20-30% arts & humanities people to make it more interesting, cool and understandable to the general public, which would increase it’s donor base and overall size significantly. Lots of people love science though not great at it themselves, and science always prospers with more of them around. Smart scientific/tech organizations make sure they have a front room of arts & humanities communicators in order to make sense of and communicate to the world all the progress the science teams are making in the back room. In tech that’s required for profit making. In philanthropy, unfortunately you can just not do it because you don’t know how and don’t feel like it, so effectiveness is undermined by donors propping you up without the accountability profit making brings, you can just have a back room, and no front room, to your diminishment and loss of effectiveness.

There’s a reason everyone loves music. We are artistic and creative humans and are moved deeply by art and music. There’s an old saying in social activist circles, “Every Revolution has its Music”. And it is so very true. EA doesn’t have its music. That’s why it remains tiny, compared to what it could be. I’ve a sense the Moral Ambition movement will fix this and prosper. EA could too.

Jeffrey Kursonis 2 Oct 2025 10:07 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
Yes there’s always going to be an Andres where it works out well. And everyone knows AIM has done well…but I think they could have done ten times better. EA could be five to ten times bigger if they would cure the ailment you so love.

The difference between my view and AIM/EA broadly is the difference between on the ground real life experience in how humans are motivated and an attempt to figure out reality via spreadsheet & analysis in a room. Believe me I’m an EA and I love EA very much. I never digressed to hedging my love by being “EA adjacent” as some. I’ve maintained being fully public EA. I’m not rejecting EA’s core project to use science to be more effective in altruism, I’m saying to modify it with some common sense. EA funding all sorts of new charities from 25 year olds with a napkin plan and not seeking veterans is one example. I love the 25 year olds with a napkin, but don’t only do that. Go find some veterans too. Don’t only do six causes each new round at AIM, open it up and do “both and”, both the new one’s and the ongoing list of past one’s.

Some donors like EAs current narrow way, probably ten times more would like it to be far more pragmatic with deeply experienced field advisors and not only a few researchers in a room calling shots. Both and. EA is religious in its legalism.

By the way, you do a good job here, I appreciate you.

Jeffrey Kursonis 2 Oct 2025 9:40 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Toby Tremlett🔹’s comment on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
Yes that’s valuable, but I’d say it’s pretty easy to synthesize their cause priorities with founders own motivations. For example, keep the list going for every new round, so there’s 20-30 choices, all just as worthy as they were last year. Two orgs coming at one cause with different approaches is great. This same problem exists throughout EA when we imagine we can truly figure out what needs to be done based on the ITN framework. It’s a great framework, I love it, but the reality of making impact in the real world in a cause you’ve prioritized is that there are infinite angles to approach each one. Between two broad approaches are infinite degrees of adjustment to approach it. The world is too big to figure it out in advance, so allow founder interest to guide to which approach you will take. To imagine researchers in a room in the U.K., not in the field, having no personal knowledge of the cause overall and specific challenges on the ground, to be able to figure it out on paper is an intellectual arrogance. The world is too big, you can’t figure it out. So be practical and let talent guide you. We can only do what we have the talent to do. Don’t muzzle your one pragmatic chance to do something.

Jeffrey Kursonis 1 Oct 2025 18:10 UTC
16 points
5 ∶ 23
on: Charity Entrepreneurship is bottlenecked by a lack of great animal founders
Given leadership literature is rife with stories of rejected individuals going on to become great leaders, and your current problem from this post. Wouldn’t it make sense to just recalibrate your criteria and accept more you might have rejected before? Maybe you’ve been off. Always accept enough to hit your quota. To miss your quota and still have many rejected applicants sitting there seems way too high confidence in yourselves and your criteria. Disrupt yourself.

I call these the hidden gems, maybe you’re not good at identifying them.

Also, why don’t you put out more open calls to have applicant’s come start any kind of animal welfare org they want, not just your four pre-imagined ones? This issue always seems so bassackward to me with AIM. Motivation arises within people’s own hearts and minds — not from an outside party who assigns them four choices. In a million years I couldn’t imagine rising with motivation to someone else’s idea rather than to my own. Certainly to modifying my idea, yes. (I’m a serial social entrepreneur and have mentored hundreds).

It’s not just AIM, all of EA has been shooting its own foot since inception with its criteria for accepting people. Don’t follow their example. Find more experienced veterans. Don’t consider so highly academic backgrounds. Develop new creative criteria and testing like Facilitative Interpersonal Skills (FIS) screening to find highly socially gifted people, a major need in founders.

Many people don’t mature enough to pursue high status colleges when young, later they might have, but it just wasn’t in them to bother with that at age 18, yet they became leaders of various things in their lower status college. Holding choices they made when having barely emerged from childhood against them and rejecting them because of it is insanity if you sanely want to mentor world changing leaders. Smart on paper but socially awkward works sometimes, other times the opposite is better, gems can go either way, you have to get better at sussing them out. Pairing them is good. Disrupt your own thinking and EA culture.

Rather than just applications run a mentoring program and suss them out. The ones who aren’t founders might be operations champions or tech leads. Have two cofounders come out with an OPs/admin person, enlarge your budgets to accommodate.

We are mostly Western in EA which is 15% of humanity. Add in a few non Western hot spots and around 25% of the world does almost all science, research and innovation. That means 75% of human brains are sitting on the sideline and not in the game. With all our existential and long term challenges, humanity is only deploying 25% of its resources. If longterm future humans could look back at us today, they’d be aghast. Deploying MORE of us is the only winning path, not rejecting more.

Or don’t disrupt and carry on with the small EA we have which could and should be five times bigger. Einstein had something to say on this.
ps. If you want to imagine and start more charities, the 75% is there ready to get in the game. That’s my gig.

Jeffrey Kursonis 15 Jul 2025 15:22 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 2
on: July ’25 EA Newsletter Poll
It is possible to rationally prioritise between causes without engaging deeply on philosophical issues
I think GiveWell’s criteria of Effective Charities needing to be 10x better than direct cash transfers is greatly flawed for so many reasons.

- We each might consider giving to local needs in our own neighborhood as well as top charities no matter how far away. Why? Because you can’t allow your own neighborhood to decay while you optimize bang for buck elsewhere. the argument that only a few will optimize and plenty will give locally is good for adjusting your ratio, but you still are responsible for where you live. The other side is so many don’t give at all, so you’re needed locally.

- it is a big gigantic reality we live in and all important considerations are not knowable, some hide in areas we are ignorant of, so balance with common sense that is purely subjective is our only recourse and it’s kept humanity alive so far, we shouldn’t abandon it.

- following the above idea one might imagine there are many specific benefits of a particular cause area and specific charities within it whose impact is just not measurable by comparing it to the specific criteria’s used to measure in current effective giving formula’s and that it be 10x...what kind of random thing is 10x?? There just has to be more, and philosophy is part of that, but so is deep ancient wisdom and common sense. What about root causes that affect so much upstream? Maybe a root cause is vastly more important because of how it affects so much upstream and it can’t be compared apples to apples with a 10X measurement. Maybe the criteria of how they’re measuring is so missing this root issue multiplier at times that it is in reality way off.

- giving to causes you care for has value. If we are to disconnect with our own emotional experiences and values we become not humans but robots optimizing on algorithms. Losing our humanity leads to things like FTX. Not optimal.

- in the end there should be a balance that suits you. GiveWell should be a trusted source weaved in with others in the mix of your best balance. We should continually spread awareness of Effective Giving so others can add this to their balance. it’s not either/or but both/and. If your best balance imbues you with a sense you are holding responsibility locally with optimizing globally and that injects some turbo into your engine, then you are going much faster and it feels great, which makes you more effective at everything in your life. If you are at all feeling anxiety about your contribution to good in this world, you might consider how your balance is, have certain pressures pushed you from what is best for you? Lots of EA’s have suffered guilt at not doing enough...I’d suggest be both EA and other ways of thinking too. Balance.

Jeffrey Kursonis 4 Jun 2025 20:17 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 2
in reply to: Brad West🔸’s comment on: The EA’s guide to Moral Ambition
I think the reluctance toward confrontation may also be because of collective personality traits of STEMs, they tend to work in the backroom developing stuff. The frontroom people who are more creative and social and do sales and marketing are the one’s more willing to be confrontational or persuasive. Tech has both rooms, EA only has a backroom to its diminishment (which you can notice by the utter absence of art/creativity/marketing). I wonder what the personality spectrum is in SMA? You can tell by the contrast of their focus and culture in the article they are likely more of a blend of science & humanities, while EA is pure science.

Jeffrey Kursonis 30 May 2025 1:27 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 1
on: Why is Apart Research suddenly in dire need of funding?
I’m in a cause area most of the big funds are not yet on board with yet (6x only, not yet to GiveWell’s 10x bar)...so we have to go out to the traditional philanthropy world to find funding. That can have many good benefits for both sides.

Jeffrey Kursonis 30 May 2025 0:44 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Veronica Gordi’s comment on: Claude 2 on Art and EA
Hi Thanks Veronica, I fixed the link :) Here it is again.

Jeffrey Kursonis 30 May 2025 0:38 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Veronica Gordi’s comment on: EA needs Life-Veterans and “Less Smart” people
Hi Veronica, Yes there are various EA art groups that kind of ebb and flow in energy, some are on the EA Anywhere Slack, which is the official Slack of EA, just search on there. The one I was involved in that was really great for a year has kind of ebb’d a bit now, after we all accomplished so much we got too busy (two charities got started, and a possible third) So I can’t really refer you to one. The other thing is to be the art person in your local or university EA group. Offer your talent to EA orgs you appreciate. All of us who understand EA needs more art to be a normal healthy human movement, should always just be promoting that. We’ve done art installations at EAG’s. Consider that. For that get in touch with local organizers or Center for Effective Altruism (CEA) which oversees them all. I’d love to see a meta movement encouraging EA orgs to have more art in their offices and publications.

Jeffrey Kursonis 30 May 2025 0:14 UTC
7 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Positive effects of EA on mental health
In a sense this would be like polling a random cross section of world humanity...most of them are mentally healthy. Currently 1 Billion people have a common mental disorder (CMD), like anxiety, depression, PTSD, as opposed to the Serious one’s like Psychosis, Schizophrenia, etc. That makes it 1 of 8 humans, and puts depression as the no. 1 global health disability (all health). So if 1 out of 8 EA’ers responds to the culture with “impact obsession”—guilt at eating an ice cream cone instead of grinding at their desk kind of thing then that is in line and is a serious thing...EA should work on those issues, make that a less common response to our culture and care for those ill affected, and I applaud Julia and all who do. And just as 1 of 8 EA’ers being depressed isn’t helping the effectiveness of our altruistic goals, so the same problem exists in the whole world toward every good goal of humanity. We need to work on those issues.

So EA should not only be concerned about EA meta health, it should be concerned about the world’s mental health. Both.

I agree that for most being in EA is better for mental health, I find it invigorating to be around a bunch of people interested in doing good for their fellow humans. But depending on various factors, like people self selecting to be in EA because they already feel guilty they’re not doing enough, or a tendency to judge themselves and feel guilt, we still have to be promoting mentally healthy ways of being together on our particular mission.

Here’s a little suggestion for EA mental health, reflecting the Harvard study of adult development, an 85 year longitudinal study that said when all is said and done, it’s having good relationships that accounted for people having better mental health; Rather than efficiently downing a Huel so you can stay at your desk and keep grinding, lean toward getting together with co-workers or friends for lunch, spend time talking and enjoying each other. Get your mind off work. Try twice a month to do something creative for lunch in the office, like get a bunch of groceries delivered, and have everyone cook a meal together, serve cool drinks to those standing around if there’s not enough room in the kitchen for everyone, puts cutting boards out and get those STEM’s choppin’ broccoli. (like the famous Dana Carvey SNL skit). Spend time together—no talking about work allowed. Anyone who accidentally brings up a work issue, gets some funny punishment...like choppin’ more broccoli.

We are not robots optimizing, we are humans living in relationships, and ice cream always earns more than it takes. Consider more art too. It’s basically human relationship in a different medium, proven over and over to improve mental health, and makes people visiting your office (and home) think you are cool. Robots don’t need ice cream or art, if you also don’t...hmmm...maybe some of you are already transitioning...or you’re optimizing on robot criteria rather than human.