As we all work to redefine our futures and the nature of business, we’re often looking for what will be a more fulfilling way of doing it. We’re seeking more meaningful and impactful work that is driven by passion, purpose, autonomy, and self-actualization. It’s work that helps people to identify and pursue opportunities, to solve problems, and to create more value for internal and external customers, suppliers, partners, and others. It’s work that cultivates the capacities of curiosity, imagination, creativity, intuition, empathy, and social intelligence. This work is the new work.
While many people talk about the new ways of working and a better future, few seem to be asking a more fundamental question: What is work?
The question is more important than it might seem. It is one that reveals a fundamental difference between how scientists define work and how most people think about it. Scientists understand that work is energy transfer. It happens whenever a force exerts a displacement on an object. The more significant the force and the larger the displacement, the more work is done. The SI unit for work is the joule (J).
If you hold a book without moving it, no work is done. However, if you push the book against the floor, it will move. The amount of work will depend on the direction that the book moves, which is determined by the angle between the force vector F and the displacement vector d. Depending on the direction, work may be positive or negative. For example, throwing a ball across the room has positive work, because the ball gains kinetic energy as it travels over this distance.
Work also depends on whether the force is constant or variable. If the force is constant, work will be proportional to the distance travelled. But if the force is variable, the work will be different for each instant of time because the direction of the displacement changes with the direction of the force. The work will be infinitesimal for each instant, but it will add up to a finite amount over the entire trajectory.
If you divide the motion into one-way one-dimensional segments, the total work done is the path integral formula W =
