Okay vs Great
When you don't care enough, you will compromise, you will reserve your honest opinion, you will avoid conflicts. Things won't be great, but they will be "okay".
Instead of aiming for maximum fulfillment, you are aiming for minimum effort. You do just enough to pass, but not enough to proudly share your work.
But we all know this is not how great work is created. Great work is created by people who care.
The sad thing about our education system is that 90% of the time, we are forcing students to do work that they don't care enough about. As a result, they disengage, do the bare minimum and avoid deep work.
The hard thing with teaching, therefore, is to make students care. Because when they care, they will hold nothing back, they will be authentic, they will max out learning.
A teammate at MO told me the other day: "Usually, I'm a very agreeable person. But when I'm here, I'm so much more vocal about what I believe. Probably, this is the first time that I'm working on something that I care so much about." That is the most fulfilling thing I've ever heard as a leader.
When I envision the culture and environment at MO, the goal is not to make people agreeable. The goal is to make people care.
When people care enough, things won't be okay, they will be great.