We Are Only Human After All

By Ali Vahed

Earlier this month, I spent a few days creating a workshop on AI as Copilot for Product Managers. The feedback was positive, so I invested another couple of days turning the content into a comprehensive blog post. I was pleased with the result and genuinely believed it could be useful for others new to this space.

I finished writing around 2:00 AM on Saturday and decided to schedule it for auto-publishing on LinkedIn on Monday, 8 September.

Then Father’s Day happened. As a proud dad, I shared a casual photo of my gifts on Instagram along with a dad joke about ROI (Return on Investment). When my daughter asked what ROI meant, I realised my professional humour might not land everywhere, so I quickly adapted the post for LinkedIn in just five minutes, just for fun.

On Monday morning, after a sleepless night with a sick child, I completely forgot about the scheduled post. As a result, the two posts went live only a day apart.

The outcome? The LinkedIn version of the Father’s Day post not only outperformed the same post on Instagram but also received way more engagement than the professional blog article, effectively masking it.

Part of me expected this:

  • A light-hearted personal story is easier for people to relate.  
  • Monday is not the best day to publish a post in LinkedIn and not get lost among all updates.
  • Publishing two post so close together guaranteed one would drown out the other. 
Still, I was disappointed a little at first.

How could people on LinkedIn, of all places, overlook a professional content in favour of a simple personal moment? How could I be more cautious to plan proper publishing time?

Then it hit me: we are only human after all.

We connect at a human level first. A father sharing a proud moment resonates far more than a experiment in Product Management, unless that directly solves a need for the reader.

This is not a flaw in social interactions. It is what makes us interesting. 

We are beautifully human, not rigidly robotic. We are wired to connect through shared experiences and emotions before expertise and insights. I am quite sure if AI agents were my readers, the engagement would have been the opposite.

The AI article will find its audience when someone needs exactly what it offers. The Father’s Day post connected instantly because it touched something universal.

Rather than being frustrated, I've decided to celebrate it. Our humanity is not a bug, it is a feature.  

It is what makes everything we do, from building products to leading teams and sharing knowledge, ultimately about people.❤️

(The title of this post was inspired by one of my favourite songs: "Human" by Rag’n’Bone Man. I’m only human after all.)

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