Pick The Question

Never On The Test - funk - 3:41

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Song Background/Inspiration

You can take a job, break it into a list of tasks, hand each task to a machine, and watch every box turn green - and still end up with no job done. Pick the Question is a worker patiently walking a manager through the difference. A task is a piece. A job is the judgment that decides which pieces matter, notices when they are wrong, and owns the whole. It is the email that is ready and the sense not to send it; the thread between the to-dos that nobody ever wrote down. The song turns on one question it leaves ringing in the air: a machine can hand you all the answers, but who is going to pick the question?

Lyrics

Let me spell it out slow, 'cause you got it confused You can break a whole job into pieces to use Automate each one, watch 'em all turn green But the job was never just the sum of the routine You can hand off a task Go ahead, give it away But a job's got a thread That the pieces can't replay Tasks, not jobs It's all the machine can hold It'll do the thing you ask But it won't know what to ask It can run the step But it can't own the whole It does the tasks Not the jobs A job is the email's ready - and knowing not to send A job is the room going cold, and you catch it 'fore the end It's the thread through all the to-dos that you never wrote down The hand on the wheel when a hundred loose pieces spin 'round You can hand off a task Go ahead, give it away But a job's got a thread That the pieces can't replay Tasks, not jobs It's all the machine can hold It'll do the thing you ask But it won't know what to ask It can run the step But it can't own the whole It does the tasks Not the jobs So you counted up the tasks And you cut us loose for parts Bought a box for every piece Now where's the one with the heart? A job's the thing that decides Which task even gets done You can automate the answers But who's gonna pick the question? Tasks, not jobs It's all the machine can hold It'll do the thing you ask But it won't know what to ask It can run the step But it can't own the whole It does the tasks Not the jobs It does the tasks Not the jobs ..Who's gonna pick the question?