We’ve all heard the clichés: “If you’re going to do something, do it right,” and “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” Change one word—“right” to “artfully”—and the view of work as art is not the far reach it may appear to be. But allow me to state my case more, er, artfully.

Like art, work can pull every feeling from our emotional palette—it can move us, confuse us, inspire us, frustrate us, and change us. It can give us joy, or bring us to tears. Regardless of whether our work is presiding or parenting, we spend more waking time than not in our work, and it is through our work that we can employ our creative sense and enrich our lives fully.

Work remains our best chance to be artful—our best opportunity to be fully involved in an activity that expresses who we are, to call forth our creative spirit. If we let it, work can be a wonderfully rewarding experience of challenge and curiosity in which we discover daily new depths of our identity and imagination.

The “art” is in the individual details and everyday doings of whatever work we perform, and is revealed through our ability to put our fingerprints on it in our own original way.

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