Work.
As a couple, we’ve spent countless hours reading and ruminating around why we work. Do we live to work, or work to live? Do we take a dream job, or make a dream job? What are our gifts? What are our passions? Does our work allow us to exercise our gifts and live out our passions? What does it mean to be a “worker” in this world? What does it mean to be a creator, cultivator and keeper of culture? Is our work good? What is good work?
Big questions. Books are written on the topic. We’ve read them.
In her seminal essay titled Why Work, the great author Dorothy Sayers suggests that the worker’s first duty is to serve the work. She writes, “to aim directly at serving the community is to falsify the work.” Sayers goes on to suggest that one cannot do good work if she takes her mind off the work to see how the community is taking it: “If you set out to serve the community, you will probably end by merely fulfilling a public demand — and you might not even do that…Set your mind on serving the work. The only reward the work can give you is the satisfaction of beholding its perfection.”
In other words, it is the work that serves the community; the business of the worker is to serve the work. And to serve it well.
Our goal at Everyday Co. is simple: to build delightful projects that inspire people, showcase place and make the ordinary a little less ordinary. That is our work. That is who we are as humans. That is what we do best. So we try our best to do that. Everyday. Of course, evaluating the success of this work isn’t always so cut and dried. Did the client like it? What if there is no client? Did the internet like it? Did anyone see it? Did anyone share it? Did it make us money? Did we enjoy the process? Did we have fun doing it? How did the community respond? Do we care about these things?
With those big questions in mind, we’ve started to explore our own way of evaluating the quality (or “good-ness”) of our work. They are:
- Is it simple?
- Is it excellent?
- Is it timeless?
- Is it our best?
By asking these questions at the beginning, middle and end of every project, we’ve found that our work continues to grow and our relationship to the work continues to strengthen.
What questions do you ask when evaluating your work? We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
Now then…back to work.
