The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up... so the next stage is hard work
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiRead
Our jobs determine to a large extent what our lives are like. Is what you do for a living making you ill? Does it keep you from becoming a more fully realized person? Do you feel ashamed of what you have to do at work? All too often, the answer to such questions is yes. Yet it does not have to be like that. Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we collectively take.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our jobs significantly influence our overall quality of life and personal fulfillment.
In this quote, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes the profound impact that our jobs have on our lives, questioning whether our work leads to illness or unfulfillment. He challenges us to reflect on our professional engagements and hints at the potential for work to be a source of joy and fulfillment, depending on our collective actions and choices
Themes
WorkFulfillmentJoyPersonal GrowthCareer
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about finding joy in your career.
More from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
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To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested.
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It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.
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When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiRead
Similar quotes
When you start to confuse Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae with members of your family, and you remember 2,000 stock symbols but forget the children's birthdays, there's a good chance you've become too wrapped up in your work.
Peter LynchRead
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
Khalil GibranRead
A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.
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The best thing about my job, though, is stopping at the end of the day and rejoining the human universe.
Orson Scott CardRead
I have a job I'm pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive.
Roxane GayRead
Work is work; wherever I'm working, I do the best I can. If the actual dollars come from investors as opposed to taxpayers and patrons, what's the difference?
Twyla TharpRead