Hope is less about optimism over outcomes than about the sense that an action is worth taking. Without it a burnt-out bulb stays burnt out for six weeks, not because changing it is hard but because changing it seems pointless.
Which makes the small jobs a decent gauge, and a decent lever. Nobody can decide to feel hopeful. Most people can change a bulb.
Doing one apparently pointless small thing sometimes restarts the sense that the world responds to being touched.