Total Work

Kyle Kowalski wrote blog post titled Total Work: When Humans are Transformed into Workers and Nothing Else.

My favorite line of the post comes from a quote by Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma:

“We don’t lack people saying ‘correct’ things in the world today, what we lack is truthful words that make people think.”

« I came across the concept of total work through Andrew Taggart—and, oh man, has he opened my eyes and expanded my mind to an entirely new level of thinking about work: the history and evolution of work, the meaning of work (and life for that matter), and where work should be headed in the future. Total work is the most profound concept I’ve come across lately; it’s a good example of this quote for me: “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes »

«  Challenging the concept of work isn’t new. Bertrand Russell, author of the essay In Praise of Idleness (1932), challenged the value and virtuousness of work during his day.

“There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.” »

« “Total work” was coined by German philosopher Josef Pieper in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture (1948)… Let’s see if there’s anything else we can glean from Pieper’s words…

“The ability to be ‘at leisure’ is one of the basic powers of the human soul. Like the gift of contemplative self-immersion in Being, and the ability to uplift one’s spirits in festivity, the power to be at leisure is the power to step beyond the working world and win contact with those superhuman, life-giving forces that can send us, renewed and alive again, into the busy world of work…” »

« Here are some practical recommendations Taggart offers for all of us to consider to evolve beyond total work…

“We could dis-identify from the work that we’re doing. Saying to ourselves, ‘Whoever I fundamentally, truly, ultimately am, I am not what I do for a living.’ Indeed, let that be our personal mantra: ‘I am not my work.’”

“I’ve come to believe that what must be discovered instead—and this is no easy thing—is the contemplative stillness that exists beneath any pace of life, whether fast, fluctuating, or slow, that sense of abiding peace that T.S. Eliot once so beautifully called ‘the still point of the turning world.’ How to find that abiding peace, that ground of Life, really is the question.” »