Practice
7 Days — Finding Your Work
On dharma — the work that is actually yours to do.
Day 1 — The assigned thing
Do the assigned thing.
BG 3.8 — Perform thou right action, for, action is superior to inaction, and, inactive, even the maintenance of thy body would not be possible. read →
Practice
Pick the task you've been calling optional and treat it as required today.
Day 2 — Your own method
Don't run someone else's playbook.
BG 3.35 — Better one's own duty, though destitute of merit, than the duty of another, well discharged. Better death in the discharge of one's own duty; the duty of another is full of danger. read →
Practice
Notice one place you're copying a colleague's method and do it your own way today.
Day 3 — Because it needs doing
Do it because it needs doing.
BG 18.9 — He who performeth a prescribed action, saying, "it ought to be done," O Arjuna, relinquishing attachment and also fruit, that relinquishment is regarded as pure. read →
Practice
For one task today, check your reason bottoms out at 'this needs doing'.
Day 4 — Flawed but yours
Your own flawed work beats a borrowed one.
BG 18.48 — Congenital duty, O son of Kunti, though defective, ought not to be abandoned. All undertakings indeed are clouded by defects as fire by smoke. read →
Practice
Do the task that's actually yours today, imperfectly.
Day 5 — Do, don't claim
Do the work, drop the claim.
BG 3.19 — Therefore, without attachment, constantly perform action which is duty, for, by performing action without attachment, man verily reacheth the Supreme. read →
Practice
Do one useful thing today and tell no one.
Day 6 — The work itself
Act; the outcome isn't yours.
BG 2.47 — Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached. read →
Practice
Pick one task today and do it well without checking how it lands.
Day 7 — Understand it
Understanding is what clears it.
BG 4.38 — Verily there is no purifier in this world like wisdom; he that is perfected in yoga finds it in the Self in due season. read →
Practice
Take the problem you keep reacting to and spend ten minutes just understanding it.