The virtue of Productiveness is the recognition of the fact that productive
work is the process by which man’s mind sustains his life, the process that
sets man free of the necessity to adjust himself to his background, as all
animals do, and gives him the power to adjust his background to himself.
Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the
highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness,
his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his
dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values.
“Productive work” does not mean the unfocused performance of the motions of
some job. It means the consciously chosen pursuit of a productive career, in
any line of rational endeavor, great or modest, on any level of ability. It is
not the degree of a man’s ability nor the scale of his work that is ethically
relevant here, but the fullest and most purposeful use of his mind.