GiveMaxxing: The Art of Giving in a World Built on Taking

Gen Z is maxxing everything. Their looks. Their sleep. Their gains. Their smell. So why are we still giving at the bare minimum?

Ten years ago, I cooked pasta for strangers in a 350-square-foot Manhattan apartment. No agenda. No pitch. No networking. Just a table, one gratitude question asked at 7:47 PM, and the willingness to slow down long enough for something real to happen. I didn’t know it then, but I was GiveMaxxing before the word existed.

Eight hundred gatherings across six continents later, I can tell you what I know for certain: we optimized our lives and outsourced our meaning. We chased frictionless convenience and watched human connection collapse around us. You can click, order, stream, scroll and “connect” without ever stepping outside yourself. More than half of the American workforce is lonely. We have never been more technologically wired, or more emotionally empty.

My friend, Jack, gave what we were doing for so many years a name: GiveMaxxing.

GiveMaxxing is the intentional practice of maximizing the things that make us feel most human: gathering people together, asking meaningful questions and expressing gratitude in ways people can actually feel. In a world designed to eliminate friction, GiveMaxxing argues that some friction is actually the point.

Workday’s 2026 Human Connection Workplace Index research captures this precisely: “Quintessential moments of workplace connection happen inside small frictions. They’re the texture of working with other people. And they open up opportunities for mentorship, collaboration, learning, innovation, and more.” We are not just losing connection. We are actively smoothing it away.

GiveMaxxing runs on three pillars.

1. Gathering

In a world where nearly every interaction has become digital, gathering people together in real life has become a radical act. When human beings sit around a table together to eat, something shifts. Hierarchies soften. Defenses lower. Conversations slow down. People stop performing and start revealing.

Research has since validated what humans always knew intuitively. A Cornell University study of 50 firehouses found that firefighters who regularly ate meals together performed significantly better as a team. As the study’s author Kevin Kniffin put it: “Eating together is a more intimate act than looking over an Excel spreadsheet together. That intimacy spills back over into work.” For thousands of years, the table was where community happened.

The problem is that we replaced gathering with networking. Networking is often transactional. It asks, consciously or unconsciously, “What can this person do for me?” Gathering asks a completely different question: “How can we create something meaningful together to do good for others?” To gather properly, you do not need a massive friend group, a fancy venue, or a complicated production. You need intention. You need courage to invite. And you need the willingness to create a finite window where people can slow down long enough for connection to happen.

And yet, even when we have the time to gather, we are choosing not to. In the Workday study, 43% of employees believe AI has freed up time for human connection, but only 28% are actually using that saved time on collaboration, networking or team strategy. We have the hours. We are simply not spending them on each other.

Once a month, block 90 minutes. No agenda. No slides. No pitch. Invite five people from different parts of your organization to share a meal and answer one question together. Watch what gets said that never gets said in a conference room.

2. Asking (Good Questions)

Nearly 7 in 10 American adults say they needed more emotional support last year than they received. The hunger is there. The questions that would unlock it are not. Most people go through life asking surface-level questions and receiving surface-level relationships in return. “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “How’s work?” These questions are socially acceptable, but they rarely create transformation. A real question changes the emotional temperature of a room. A real question interrupts autopilot. It creates reflection. It signals to another human being that their inner world actually matters.

Part of why we’ve stopped asking real questions is fear. According to Workday, 37% of employees now prefer brainstorming with AI rather than a human colleague, specifically because AI won’t judge them. We have outsourced our curiosity to machines because machines feel safer.

If you ask shallow questions, you receive shallow connection. But meaningful questions invite vulnerability, honesty, memory and reflection. They require presence. They require listening without trying to fix.

Audit your last ten one-on-ones. Count how many questions you asked versus how many statements you made. Most leaders will find they spent the hour talking. The highest-performing leaders spend it listening. Replace your standing update meeting with a standing question: “What’s something you’re working through that you haven’t said out loud yet?” Then stop talking.

3. Appreciation

Not performative gratitude. Not automated gratitude. Not generic appreciation blasted out to thousands of people at once. Real gratitude is specific. It is attentive. It costs something. Most people express gratitude in whatever way is easiest for them, but meaningful gratitude is expressed in the way that is most meaningful for the recipient. Some people need words. Others, quality time, acts of service or thoughtful gifts. Some simply need your undivided attention.

Consider what the data reveals about where our gratitude is actually going: 60% of employees (per Workday) say they are greatly or completely grateful toward AI, while only 56% feel the same toward their human colleagues. We have become more grateful to machines than to the people sitting next to us.

In the workplace, gratitude only lands when another person feels genuinely seen. A handwritten letter referencing a tiny detail. A phone-free walk. Removing a burden without being asked. Remembering an unrecorded moment that nobody else noticed. These things matter because they prove presence. And presence has become rare. We live in a world where almost every interaction is optimized for speed, scale and efficiency, but appreciation refuses to be rushed.

Final Thoughts

When practiced consistently, these three pillars begin changing the way you move through the world. As a leader, relationships stop feeling transactional. Your success stops feeling hollow. The Harvard Study of Adult Development tracked 724 people for 85 years and arrived at one conclusion that made everything else secondary: “Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer. Period.” Not productivity. Not optimization. Relationships.

The old model of connection was convenience. The new model is intentional friction. Connection is no longer something that happens to us organically. It is something we must choose, design and protect. GiveMaxxing is that choice.