We continue our exploration of John Templeton’s twenty-one steps detailed in The Templeton Plan by reviewing Step 7: Investing Yourself in Your Work. As the summer vacation season winds down and we all begin to refocus on putting in a good day’s work, Templeton’s advice about work and how to be successful may come in handy.
John Templeton collected several quotes on the value of work in The Templeton Plan:
“There is honor in labor. Work is the medicine of the soul. It is more: It is your very life, without which you would amount to little.” —Grenville Kleiser
“Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man. Excellence in any art or profession is attained only by hard and persistent work. Never believe that you are perfect. When a man imagines, even after years of striving, that he has attained perfection, his decline begins.” —Sir Theodore Martin
“The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession; like the honor of a soldier, dearer to him than life.” —Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and historian
“Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.” —Henry Ford
“If you are poor, work. If you are burdened with seemingly unfair responsibilities, work. If you are happy, work. Idleness gives room for doubts and fear. If disappointments come, keep right on working. If sorrow overwhelms you and loved ones seem not true, work. If health is threatened, work. When faith falters and reason fails, just work. When dreams are shattered and hope seems dead, work. Work as if your life were in peril. It really is. No matter what ails you, work. Work faithfully—work with faith. Work is the greatest remedy available for both mental and physical afflictions.” —author Jacob Korsaren
“If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator, striving for it as the goal itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of each day.” —psychiatrist W. Beran Wolfe
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