The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

writing. In his mind, he knew what he was trying to do and
that people would understand some day. For him, it wasn’t
about the money. It was about the craft, about honoring the
work and doing what was his to do. The writer’s name was
James Joyce.
Joyce, who grew up in Ireland, fled his country after
graduating college, at which point he rejected his Roman
Catholic upbringing along with many other traditions and
ties. He was determined to become a great writer with a
brand-new style that would redefine our understanding of
literature. And he did just that. In spite of his peers’
misgivings, and even the jabs of a well-meaning wife, in
1999, fifty-eight years after his death, Joyce was voted by
Time magazine as one of the most important people to have
lived in the twentieth century.
When the world seems to conspire against you and when
everyone around calls you a failure, true masters keep
going. Even when others don’t understand, masters
recognize their allegiance is to a higher calling than pleasing
the masses. Joyce was trying to do something the world had
never seen. He was chasing a passion, and what we learn
from such dedication is that what looks like irrelevance now
can lead to legacy later. But passion alone is not enough to
sustain the work. True mastery is about greatness, about
doing something that pushes the limitations of what others
think is possible or even sensible. Peter Senge, a professor at
MIT, describes mastery as something that “goes beyond
competence and skills . . . It means approaching one’s life