Artful Work

Artful work Awakening, joy, meaning and commitment in the workplace. By Dick Richards. Berret – Koehler Publishers. San Francisco. Review done by Genaro Rebolledo Méndez, 30th October, 2001. This is rather a book of how to change business “mentality” and create a more “artistic” workplace. It begins by telling how much energy people waste trying to find why thing go wrong. According to the author, people are looking where they should not. Why is it so? Because our believes and most cherished values and thoughts are difficult to change (you can also find a reference to this in Mario Bunge´s book “Trateise in Philosophy, Volume 6). It is normally difficult for us human beings to challenge ourselves and recognize that we were wrong indeed. So, if we recognize we are wrong by thinking like that, how should we think? We should think in a way of including artistic feelings in the process of working, meaning that work is not only to give us stability or money, and art joy and relaxation very far away from work; work is actually quite an artistic think and should not be separated from art. What is then artful work?, in terms of the author, the artist perception of artful work is: All work can be artful. The reward for artful work is in the doing. The ambition of artful work is joy. All work is spiritual work. Artful work demands that the artist owns the work process. Artful work requires consistent and conscious use of the self. As the artist creates the work, the work creates the artist. The base to achieve these concepts and therefore become an artist in working is to understand that the dynamic ingredient of every artful work is human energy without this, all we do might not be artful. Human energy is composed of four elements: physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy and spiritual energy. Physical refers to the body and how we take care of it. Mental energy is concerned with concepts, ideas, planes, and all the cognitive techniques. Emotional energy has to do with fluctuant emotions we have everyday, joy, tender, sadness. And spiritual energy is concerned with our perception of the invisible forces that take us through the world, whatever name it might take. Any change or alteration in one of these energies, would mean an alteration in the other three. The process of bringing all the four energies together is called centering and its result is artistry. Centering. The author of this book, bases his beliefs in a concept borrowed from a poet and potter (M.C. Richards). Richards when talking about pottering, he mentions the importance of putting all your being in one point, so that the resulting pottery be of an extreme beautiful and meaning to you. The author argues then how occidental societies try to diminish the sentimental side of humans, considering it inappropriate in the serious world. However he tries to call our attention and put all our feelings on the table, before we can actually move. Putting feelings on the table means accepting and recognizing such feelings, and then be open and move ahead. The spiritual side, our spiritual side is often forgotten too. Sometimes it does not exist, some other even though it exists it is suppressed and denied. Putting our spirit in the things we do means to love what we do, to give away our existence to the work we do. In putting our emotions and spirits in the things we do, we might realize quite quickly how useful it is in any kind of the jobs we do. For some reason we have come to split the art world from the business, commercial and academic contemporary world, but it has not be like this anymore. Whatever the work any individual might do, if it is worth doing it, then it is worth doing it correctly, happily and putting ourselves there, centering ourselves. --- “Every person is a special kind of artist and every activity is a special art.” All work can be artful. The author begins this chapter by telling some histories about people enjoying their work, and how much they enjoyed what they were doing. The author gives one warning to everybody willing to do his work artful: Work is not a mutually exclusive with art and joy, after all, the activities that we do in the day, should be enjoyable and like art, a pastime rather than a mere way of subsisting. The chapter then focuses on four questions done to the reader: Do I care about the work itself ? To the point I enjoy it, I become one when I work, and I am actually engages, in some way like a marriage with it? Am I committed to it? Have you chose to be engaged with it? Can I express myself through work? Expressing myself does not mean to expose my intimate self. Rather it means to put one s self (as a person, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually) to an idea, a feeling, a spiritual longing or a belief. Am I committed to the meaning of my job? Meaningfulness is not referred here to formal definitions of things, rather, it has to do a lot with what it actually means to me. Is what I am doing important enough for me?, With the things I do, am I creating a better World?, these questions have to be asked every time we ask for meaningfulness. G Am I tenacious enough to do the work well? The work we do might present difficulties, makes us suffer pain, make us struggle, but that is actually the key to enjoy it!, it has to be like that (according to some people it would be something impossible to achieve), so we can be artful, by trying to survive through this rather unfriendly world. Work, rewards and joy. The author begins this section by stating the second and third belief of artful work, namely, the reward for artful work is in the doing, and the ambition of artful work is joy. He thinks that most of us look for joy after work. Work does not mean enjoyable, the weekend party, full of alcohol and people we do not want to be with, fill the gap created by that feeling. But should that be the case every time? According to the author not. Joy comes with work, it happens when unexpected things occur around us as a result of doing something challenging and doing it well.. “Joy occurs when we exceed ourselves, we transcend who we are what we think we are capable of creating”. The degree in which we look for joy in work, is the degree in which we use artfulness. Work should not be regarded as a problem solution chain, au contraire, it should be regarded as an opportunity to have joy, which is something we all deserve by being Humans. Why then, it appears that we need constantly to look for joy outside the world? A first approach by the author is the need of approval and mystification problems related to anyone of us. Mystification comes when as humans, we deny ourselves and become someone that important older people around us want us to be. Normally, the father of a family creates a model for their children and children in turn deny themselves and learn that the only way of love is repressing feelings (but fear), be dominated by the father, blind obedience, destruction of individual willpower, and repression of independent thinking whenever it departs from authority. On the other hand, the need of external approval is evident since school, when some tells the rest what is good and what is not.