Pay comes in addition

A field, ploughed and sown for grain, will often come up dotted with wildflowers along the rows. Nobody planted them. The farmer was after the harvest; the flowers came anyway, a bonus the work threw off on its way to something else. Seneca used exactly that picture to fix where pay belongs: "pleasure is not the reward or the cause of virtue, but comes in addition to it" (Of a Happy Life IX, Stewart).

Read that as wage and work and it lands square on the job. The pay is the wildflower, not the grain. It comes in addition to good work — it isn't the reason the work is good, and it isn't what makes the work worth doing. Reverse them and the whole thing tips over: you start doing only what's seen, only what's counted, only what pays, and the work quietly rots while the check keeps clearing.

This is the week's practice at the root. Aim at the grain — the job done right, the patient settled, the load delivered safe. Let the pay arrive as what it is: a real thing, a needed thing, but a thing that follows. The order matters. Cause first, addition second.

Chase the flowers and you'll plough a thin field. Plough well and the flowers come anyway.