Medieval Stone Quarry Creed

In Deep Work by Cal Newport, he motivates his thesis with "a philosophical argument for depth." I'm not one who needed convincing, but I was intrigued by the work of Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly that Newport cites.

Dreyfus and Kelly argue in the conclusion of All Things Shining that craftsmanship provides "a key to reopening a sense of sacredness in a responsible manner." That by taking pride and valuing the work itself that a craftsman's can derive meaning outside of the individual. The task of a craftsman, they conclude, "is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there."

To further illustrate, Newport cites The Pragmatic Programmer 's quotation of the medieval quarry worker's creed:

We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.

I had to take a pause after reading this for the first time.

We have pontificated for a generation that young people must go out into the world and find a job to give them deep meaning. How many commencement addresses feature the threadbare adage "if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life"?

But life is not so simple and many jobs need to be done that do not result in accolades, intrinsic and extrinsic.

Instead of feeling forlorn that many of us will be doomed to a life of no meaning due to jobs we do not love, we should always be envisioning cathedrals. Even the most mundane job can afford opportunities to change the "how" and continually develop our skills as we develop from an "apprentice" to a "craftsman".

And thus meaning can be derived independent of the work and instead through an appreciation of the craftsmanship required and cultivated to get the work done.

As Newport quips, “You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work.”