The question may seem self evident but it’s amazing how often we become captive to the tasks of our work and the daily tasks of our lives – captive in a way that produces neither joy nor feelings of accomplishment. When a greater and inspirational “for the sake of what” is missing it becomes far too easy to fall into an unrewarding downward spiral of judgment that gives voice to internal monologues such as you didn’t do it right; it’s not good enough; it wasn’t on time; or this doesn’t matter – it’s just a job. The critique will almost always be referencing the delivered result and will be edited by missing condition of satisfaction that weren’t clarified or specified when the task was first agreed to. In other words, the critique is objectively about the delivered end result but is subjectively about the often unstated conditions of satisfaction. And it is the conditions of satisfaction that have the potential to make the result and the work process meaningful.
Absent a compelling “for the sake of what” (an ideal) which informs and defines the conditions of satisfaction the results we produce at work are often markedly absent of inspirational meaning. In this scenario the work process is doomed to be an experience that – at best – is one of going through the motions and – at worst – will never measure up to a missing ideal. The assessment of completion will almost always orient around what’s missing because, for the human spirits involved, there is an enormous gap. There is no ideal to work towards, no ideal to keep in motion, no thing produced that is personally meaningful.
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