If work had no more than this utilitarian purpose, no one would do a single hour of work past the point where they had enough money to sustain life. Of course, what is enough varies hugely from person to person. Some are content with modest lives; others want the best of everything. But the general point would still hold good.

For many people today work is no longer a means to an end. The reward for work success has become the requirement to work still more . . . and so on, for ever and ever. A means to a means to a means. Maybe that’s why so many are feeling frustrated and miserable: the end for which work is the means never comes into view. It’s just more work ahead, like in the old Buddhist tale about the guru who told his disciples that the world sits in space on the back of four elephants. The youngest and cheekiest disciple asked what the elephants stood on. “More elephants,” replied the guru. “And what do those elephants stand on?” asked the disciple, trying to show how clever he could be. “Look,” replied the exasperated guru. “It’s elephants all the way down. Get it?”

One aspect of this endless cycle of work for work’s sake seems to be a loss of any great interest in seeking. In the past, a willingness to work together for the common good was seen as the natural basis of democracy and the foundation of any society. Today, individualism is rampant, and each person seems to be out for him or herself, regardless of others’ needs. However, unless people have the freedom to choose the small things in their lives, any larger freedoms have little meaning. We may have freedom to vote, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech, but if we aren’t free to take some time off occasionally, or decide how we want to balance work with the rest of our life, we will still feel like a slave.

Working longer hours does not give any more satisfaction than keeping targets limited to work hours. We all fail to understand the same, including myself. As Jim Rohn has rightly said “You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour”.

We are prisoners by our own demand and we need to accept the fact that we are satisfying our own goals via fulfilling the company’s objectives. We believe we are investing in ourselves, but we fail to see that it is so at the cost of a healthy and truly wealthy life.

While fulfilling the targets and goals of our organization, we need to concentrate more on developing ourselves intellectually and emotionally with an objective to create a better life for self and prevent foolishly trying to prove to be the best. We can than say that we invested on ourselves, while earning and serving the organization too. An individual’s true growth cannot be weighed in terms of his/her financial earning capacity but can be valued on levels of maturity.

Working for the progress of an organization is good but serving an organization while working for self is always better and more fulfilling, making us love our work.