Ikigai & Kaizen: The Japanese Strategy to Achieve Personal Happiness and Professional Success (How to set goals, stop procrastinating, be more productive, build good habits, focus, & thrive)

by Anthony Raymond

In observing this dichotomy, Dostoevsky concluded that work is “hardest” when it is meaningless. He wrote: It once came into my head that if [someone] desired to reduce a man to nothing, to punish him atrociously … [then one could do so by putting him to work at a task that was completely useless]. Hard labor … presents no interest to the convict; but it has its utility. The convict makes bricks, digs the earth, builds… [And sometimes] even the prisoner takes an interest in what he is doing. He then wishes to work more skillfully, more advantageously. [However, if the prisoner is forced to] pour water from one vessel into another, or to transport [dirt] from one [hole] to another, [only to dig it up and move it back again], then I am persuaded that, at the end of a few days, the prisoner would strangle himself … rather than endure such torments.