Is your job important not only because it allows you to do other things but because it is meaningful in and of itself?
Eventide CEO Robin John explains what he means by the phrase “intrinsic value” when used to describe work.
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Transcript:
What do you think the most important thing that you’ve learned through your process at Eventide?
You know Eventide, we just celebrated a 15-year anniversary of founding Eventide and so the…so the one thing that I really believe even more strongly today is that every single person through their work has great capacity; capacity for good, also capacity for bad. I think for a lot of people that want to bring their faith into their work, they’re often thinking about what I would define as the instrumental value of work. Right, so they’re often thinking about, hey how do I, um, be generous. But there’s something that I think is even more meaningful in work which is the intrinsic value of that work. If I have a child who’s sick and I bring my child to the doctor and the doctor is able to care for my child, the doctor has shown me a lot of love and, like, that I feel loved by that doctor, because a doctor has taken care of my child. So that is intrinsic value of the work of a doctor even if the doctor is not bringing some of that instrumental value to their work. And often I think, especially people of faith, are more focused on the instrumental value more than the intrinsic value. And so you know that’s true of the financial advisor, it’s true of the investor, it’s true of the doctor, the nurse, the engineer. If you’re a person of faith, if God in creation had a purpose for the work that you do today, what would that purpose statement be? Like, to really understand that I think it’s going to give us so much more meaning and fulfillment in the work that we do.
