Finding flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Quotes IV

-Work generally takes up a third of the time available for living.
-Those who like their work lead richer lives.
-Children from an early age participated in their parents' work, and gradually found themselves performing as productive adults without missing a beat along the way.
-Exposure to productive tasks in the home, the neighborhood, and the community is much greater for children who grow up in wealthy and stable environments.
-In the US, almost nine out of ten teenagers are employed sometime during high school, a much higher proportion than in other technologically advanced countries, where parents prefer their children to spend as much time as possible studying, rather than being distracted by jobs irrelevant to their future careers.
-A person who grows up experiencing most of the day as neither important nor enjoyable is unlikely to find much meaning in the future.
-The attitudes set in the early years continue to color how we experience work during the rest of our lives.
-Without the goal and the challenges usually provided by a job, only a rare self-discipline can keep the mind focused intensely enough to insure a meaningful life.
-The quality of experience at work is generally more positive than one would expect. Nevertheless, if we had the chance, we would like to work less. Two major reasons seem to be involved: the objective conditions of work since those who pay another person's wages, are not particularly concerned with the well-being of their employees; and the subjective attitudes towards work.
-The intrinsic rewards of work are easiest to see in the highly individualized professions, where a person is free to choose his or her goals and set the difficulty of the task.
-"You could say that I worked every minute of my life, or that I never work a day"