If you’re a company of one, your mind-set is to build your business around your life, not the other way around. For me, being a company of one means not having to bother with infinite growth, since that was never the purpose of my working. Instead, I just focus on maximizing work in a way that works for me, which can sometimes mean doing less.

Our present theory is that devotion to a task at hand puts us in harmony with our creative source. We dedicate ourselves to work itself, not to a false personality.

Caring for the soul of the world means first making things with an acute ethical sensitivity, making them to function well and to be beautiful, using the heart and the imagination at full throttle, and giving them as much individuality as possible. These qualities are all aspects of soul. We might also create objects that we can relate to easily and even love. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, said, “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it.

I mention this because one’s chosen philosophy of human nature is vital. It determines where we focus. And our focus determines where we go.

The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results. He is likely to have to think through what relationships his skills, his specialty, his function, or his department have to the entire organization and its purpose. He therefore will also come to think in terms of the customer, the client, or the patient, who is the ultimate reason for whatever the organization produces, whether it be economic goods, governmental policies, or health services. As a result, what he does and how he does it will be materially different.