We’re All Working More, Collaborating Less, and Calling It Productivity

Work has never been more “optimized,” yet somehow it feels more scattered than ever. On this episode of The Intersect, host Cory Corinne sits down with Toby Daniels, CEO of Domain and co-founder of ON_Discourse, to talk about why modern work feels so disconnected—and why being busy isn’t the same as actually moving things forward.

Daniels traces how we went from email to Slack to AI, stacking tools on top of tools in the name of efficiency, only to end up with information spread pretty much everywhere. The result is a workday that feels loud while also strangely isolating, even when you’re technically “connected” all day long.

AI in Workplace Productivity: A Trap Keeping People at Work

Busy became the metric

Daniels points out that over time, productivity stopped being about outcomes and started being about visibility. Full calendars, nonstop Slack messages, and back-to-back Zoom calls became shorthand for importance, even when none of it led to clearer thinking or better results. “We have put a premium on busy work and we have not put a premium on outcomes,” Daniels says.

People optimize for activity instead of impact, filling their days to prove they’re contributing rather than asking whether the work itself matters. Daniels argues this is how work turns performative, where motion replaces meaning and effort becomes the product. Less creativity, less ownership, and a growing disconnect between what people say they’re doing and how their work actually feels.

Tools that fragment instead of connect

Daniels argues that modern work didn’t become disconnected overnight—it fractured slowly as tools piled up. Email was supposed to speed up communication. Slack promised fewer inboxes. Instead, work now lives across platforms that don’t talk to each other, leaving people to stitch meaning together on their own. “You might be working in Slack, on Zoom, in email, on Signal, in WhatsApp, you’re text messaging people,” Daniels says. And all of that context ends up “fragmented, fractured, distributed all over the place.”

That fragmentation actively slows things down. Important conversations lose their history, decisions get repeated, and progress stalls because no one can see the full picture. Daniels calls it “inefficient,” pointing out how much time gets wasted just trying to locate information that already exists somewhere else. 

AI’s role in isolation

Daniels is careful not to frame AI as the villain, but he’s clear about the unintended side effect it’s already having on how people work. People spend more time alone with machines and less time thinking alongside other humans. In his words, “AI in particular is forcing us to do two things. One is forcing us to work in isolation and then, you know, AI is also trying to automate us.”

What worries him most is how easily AI becomes a substitute for connection. Asking a tool for help feels safer than asking a person. There’s no judgment, no vulnerability, no friction. Daniels notes that “people are embarrassed to ask for help, particularly when they have to ask another human being,” which makes AI an easy default. 

But that convenience comes at a cost. He sees people “spending so much time with these AI tools and spending so much less time with other people,” and believes that shift feeds isolation and detachment, especially in the workplace.

Rebuilding work around contribution

For Daniels, the way forward is through contribution. He argues that work needs to move away from performance and toward participation that actually advances something meaningful. That shift starts by changing what gets rewarded. “Contribution we believe is going to be the new currency in work,” he claims, especially when it’s tied to real expertise and shared problem-solving instead of visibility.

He’s clear that this kind of contribution looks different from the way work has been measured in the past. Forget about polishing your personal brand. Do you show up inside the work itself? It’s a move away from promotion, and toward substance, where people are recognized for what they add, not how loudly they perform. 

To hear Toby Daniels’ full conversation on AI and the future of the workplace, listen to The Intersect wherever you get your podcasts.

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