Work

Work is good. What is unpleasant is fatigue. Anyone enjoys accomplishing things, and everyone would work a great deal were it not for tiredness. Yet fatigue is inevitable, and whoever attempts to eliminate effort entirely is destined for the bitterness of failure.

Despite fatigue, it is entirely possible to be happy while working if one discovers a noble reason for doing so.

We can gather the motives for working into three main groups:

• Somewhat selfish motives: obtaining money, fame, success, luxury, jewelry... These approaches prompt one to acquire those goods while working as little as possible. Work remains a burdensome drudgery.
• Noble human motives: contributing to the good of others, supporting one's family, building up society... In other words, working with a spirit of service. This mindset helps one to work cheerfully and happily.
• Supernatural motives:
  - Work is a collaboration with God the Father in perfecting Creation.
  - Work is an imitation of God the Son, Jesus Christ, who spent many years working as a carpenter in Nazareth.
  - The person who works carries out something willed by God; therefore, it pleases the Lord and becomes a means of personal sanctification. In this way, work collaborates with the Holy Spirit in our sanctification.

(These ideas are further developed in: industriousness).

It is beneficial to keep the following aspects in mind:

• Rectify the intention: add to natural or material motives a higher intention of service to others or love for God. This noble purpose is the fundamental requirement for finding happiness in one's work.
• Work well: with focus, intensity, competence, and careful attention to detail... Shoddy work satisfies neither the worker, nor others, nor God.
• Distribute time well: in order to fulfill one's duties toward the family, toward God, toward rest, and so on.
• Work with an apostolic sense: this was the hallmark of Christ's labor. His entire hidden life possessed this redeeming significance.

Teamwork means placing one's personal skills, talents, and resources at the service of a shared objective in which others collaborate.

Almost all human work is carried out in some manner as teamwork. Let us consider several examples:

• Sequential work: Individual tasks follow one after another, generating distinct intermediate outputs that the next person uses to elaborate their own product. Thus, in making bread, the farmer cultivates wheat, the miller grinds the grain into flour, and the baker takes the flour to produce bread. At times this is not teamwork in the strict sense, but rather distinct, interdependent labors that rely on each other.
• Assembly-line work: Here no finished product exists until everyone completes their specific role. The classic example is automobile manufacturing.
• Feedback loops: One person reviews the work of another and returns corrections so that it may be improved. At times this is not strict teamwork between peers, but a dynamic between supervisor and subordinate.
• Simultaneous collaboration: Everyone intervenes more or less at the same time—for example, in an active business meeting or collaborative brainstorm.

It depends:

• Often it is an excellent way of working, because the complementary capabilities of different people collaborate, yielding a higher quality and often faster result.
• It can be useless when there is neither mutual understanding nor a sense of efficiency, reducing teamwork to merely meeting to chat endlessly. For teamwork to function well, it must have clear leadership.