What is Work For?

Our Souls Need Proof of Work, by Julie Zhou at The Looking Glass

I don’t care to argue here whether hard work leads to material success.

What I want to suggest instead is that hard work is necessary for our happiness and well-being.

As it turns out, our souls needs proof of work...

This is the hidden trap of comfort: the easier and quicker our desires are fulfilled, the more our brains recalibrate. Getting what we want, without struggle or delay, numbs our ability to experience real joy and satisfaction.

In short, being too comfortable actually makes us miserable.

Almost 20 years ago, Pope Benedict spoke with Italian artisans and reminded them that 'Work is for man, not man for work.'

Too much silly research has been done on work and happiness.  It is meaning that we seek and drives us.  Happiness is a frequent but not inevitable byproduct of that. Christians distinguish between joy and happiness, and the former is tied much more strongly to meaning than to pleasantness and comfort.

What Makes Work Meaningful?  At MIT Sloan Management Review. 

We were anticipating that our data would show that the meaningfulness experienced by employees in relation to their work was clearly associated with actions taken by managers, such that, for example, transformational leaders would have followers who found their work meaningful, whereas transactional leaders would not.6 Instead, our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness.

I remember those days at work, when I had five admissions and three discharges (one and one would be more typical) and I began to ramp up the moment I got in.  My office-mate would moan, especially in his last three years before retirement, but I would tell him brightly "Fred, we are the best that is.  This is why they hired US." No wasted moments.  Anything funny was a one-liner to encourage, not an opportunity for storytelling.  Focus. Focus. Paradoxically, I was not at my most impatient those days, but at my kindest, listening most intently. I would come home and grin to my wife while sighing "I did magic today."