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a happy worker

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moralist

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I was scanning through some motivational material and these three words caught my eye...

Autonomy

Mastery

Purpose

These appear to be essential ingredients that make for a happy worker. The personal responsibility to make our own decisions, constantly meeting the challenge of improving our skills, and understanding the practical beneficial uplifting results our work offers to the society in which we live. Ayn Rand also played heavily on those themes as qualities which enobled her heroic characters. It got me to wondering if there are any others. What are your thoughts?

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It got me to wondering if there are any others. What are your thoughts?

Those are pretty fundamental. I'd add "material results". For Robinson Crusoe building a hut, the compensation might be: shelter from rain and heat and cold. In today's economy, it would mean money and things one buys for money.
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Those are pretty fundamental. I'd add "material results". For Robinson Crusoe building a hut, the compensation might be: shelter from rain and heat and cold. In today's economy, it would mean money and things one buys for money.

I think that it would not be possible for independent autonomous businessmen who acheived excellence in their field and provided genuine benefits to the lives of others, to fail to produce meaningful results.

On second thought, a person could have achieved autonomy mastry and purpose and yet excel at being a criminal. So there would need to be another ingredient that differentiated between good results or evil ones. Perhaps decency.

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Perhaps decency.
Purpose is such a universal driver/motivator that we see calls for it across so many varied cultures, religions and philosophies. The evidence of a human need/desire for purpose is all over the place. I think what you call "decency" is an aspect of the purpose. Just as a purpose can be broad or ambitious, it can be just, honest etc.

Rand thought that their were certain common values human beings should pursue if they want long term happiness (see her essay "The Virtue of Selfishness"). She lists three such values as being cardinal, underlying the rest. They are: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem.

She attempts to explain them by biology, contrasting humans to other animals. In other words, these three are cardinal values that humans must pursue for the furtherance of life. Reason is a critical tool to a human, underlying all his attempts to gain other values and to further his life. Purpose is the driver that each of us uses, to yield other values. If we successful, we the process yields us results, but it also yields the third value: Self-Esteem. Rand thought that this third was essential to human beings. It feeds back into the motivation that gives us more purpose.

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Purpose is such a universal driver/motivator that we see calls for it across so many varied cultures, religions and philosophies.

An aspect of purpose could also include meaning. Viktor Frankl, in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", made the point that meaning is absolutely essential to happiness.

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