Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World

If we don’t get Sunday right, Monday and the rest of the work-week will follow suit. 

The divided life is a temptation so built into our society, we may not even recognize it. Unfortunately, most of us fall prey to it. We either undervalue work, resenting it as simply a job, or we overvalue it as an identity-defining career.

Michael Naughton, drawing on his background in both business and theology, proposes that the key to finding balance is another important human activity: leisure.

In light of leisure—not mere amusement, but time for family, silence, prayer, and above all, worship—work becomes a space where men and women can find deep fulfilment. Naughton provides real-world examples of how businesses can promote authentic human flourishment and innovation through practices and policies that support leisure.

In Getting Work Right Michael Naughton will change how you work—and rest.

Hardcover. 200 pages.

 

AUTHOR:

Michael Naughton is the director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota).  He holds the Koch Chair in Catholic Studies and is a full professor in the department of Catholic Studies. He taught in the College of Business for over twenty years. Dr. Naughton also serves as board chair for Reell Precision Manufacturing, a producer of torque solutions for transportation, consumer electronics, medical and office automation products with offices in the US, Netherlands and China. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of ten books and over fifty articles. He helped coordinate and write the Vocation of the Business Leader issued by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, which has been translated in over fifteen languages. He is married to Teresa. They have five children and one grandchild.

PRAISE:

“Dr. Naughton brings to life the fundamental insights of the Catholic social tradition in its relation to business. Drawing upon the Catholic understanding of vocation, human dignity, common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, justice, and universal destination of the goods of the earth, he relates these principles to the commonplace practices of business—discerning your call, designing good jobs to exercise gifts and talents of workers, creating goods that truly are ‘good,’ paying just wages, and other important business practices.”—Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, President, Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development

“This little book conveys practical wisdom about the all-too-scattered works and days of our lives. It is a veritable retreat for serious businesspeople.”—Russell Hittinger, William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies, University of Tulsa

“This is a wise book that reorients work to the service of what matters: a life of joy shared with other people and with God. Michael Naughton makes this lofty ideal eminently practical, and never recommends anything that he has not practiced himself. Best of all, the book is not a guilt trip but a portal to happiness. To anyone who has ever felt overworked, overly busy, or distracted by the demands of social media, this book will seem like water in the desert.”—William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University

“In an emerging literature on the theme of meaningful work, Naughton’s Getting Work Right will have a preeminent place. His insight that meaningful work is bound at its roots with meaningful leisure—that the work week and the day of rest give meaning to each other—offers readers an intelligent, personal, and practical guide to living.”—Kenneth Goodpaster, Professor Emeritus, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota