You Are Not a Machine (Even If Your Company Treats You Like One)
Let’s start with something simple and true: You are not a machine. You are a person with limits, feelings, off days, high-energy streaks, family stuff, weird brain fog, creative bursts, and that one week a month where everything feels 20% more difficult and stressful. You are human. Beautifully, frustratingly, gloriously human.
So why do so many companies act like you're a robot?
They talk about "throughput" and "velocity" like you’re an assembly line. They expect you to “do more with less” as if you’ve got an upgrade button hidden somewhere and if you just pressed it, more money and productivity would come out. They want endless productivity with no regard for context.
Here’s the deal: when you treat people like machines, you don’t get high performance. You get burnout.
The Problem with Machine Thinking
1. Humans aren’t built for endless output
You need rest. A LOT more rest than you think, according to research- 42% of your time should be spent resting.
In fact, I’m going to pause here and quote directly from one of my all-time favorite books, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle:
“We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor.”
”
Ok so now I’ve convinced you you need rest, let’s move on while you chew on that thought.
You need variety. You need days where you can think instead of just produce. Machines a optimized for repeatable efficiency. People? We're optimized for creativity, problem-solving, and connection. That means we ebb and flow. And that’s not a bug—it’s the feature. It’s just how we are, and we need to embrace that instead of perpetually fighting it.
2. Productivity ≠ Worth
You are not your task list. You’re not a KPI. You’re not a row in a spreadsheet. But when companies measure everything and celebrate only the output, people start to internalize the idea that their value is based on how much they get done.
THAT
IS
RIDICULOUS.
That’s how people end up working through lunch, skipping PTO, and apologizing for being sick. It’s not commitment. It’s conditioning.
It’s also not your fault: that conditioning is hammered into us our entire lives. We are treated as if our only worth is in what we produce, the grades we get, the hours we spend learning and regurgitating information, the tests we take, the colleges we get into, on and on and on. It’s violently against human nature and then we wonder why people are stressed and burnt out all the time.
HMMMMM.
3. “Efficiency” is a trap when no one questions the inputs
We’ve worked with teams that were burning out trying to meet deadlines for things that no one even needed anymore. Or cranking through tasks that could’ve been automated months ago. Or spending hours making decks for meetings that didn’t matter.
That’s not efficient. That’s wasteful. And it only happens when leadership prioritizes output over clarity.
What People Actually Need
Clarity: What’s the goal? What matters most? What can we let go of?
Autonomy: Trust people to make decisions about how they work best.
Boundaries: Encourage them. Respect them. Model them.
Flexibility: Some weeks are heads-down. Some are messy. That’s normal.
Recognition: Not just for what people do, but how they do it.
If You’re a Leader, Listen Up
If you want people to thrive, stop optimizing them like they’re software. Build systems that support actual human beings. Ask better questions:
What does this team need right now?
Where are we wasting energy?
Are our goals humanly sustainable?
And most importantly, check in with your people. Not performatively. Genuinely.
Ask how they’re doing—and mean it. Being a human being makes you a LEADER. No one ever followed a spreadsheet into battle. They’ll follow an empathetic human who has their back though.
The Threadsmith Group
At The Threadsmith Group, we help companies get back to the core of what makes teams work: humans. Not systems. Not templates. Not empty buzzwords. Just actual people, doing their best work in an environment that sees them as people.
If your team feels like it’s on the verge of collapse and the only solutions you’ve been given are “optimize harder,” let’s talk.
You are not a machine. You shouldn’t be treated like one.
Let’s build better.