My take is a little cynical, but I think, “I’ve never given my best” means that the poster takes some pride in what his potential best is, and it has the side effect of never challenging the idea of what your best is. Doing good work, and being good at the work are different.
In terms of philosophical perspective that seems to address intrinsic or extrinsic motivations for moral behavior, here being transformed into intrinsic or extrinsic motivations for excellence in professional work, not giving your best may be like simply avoiding difficult situations. That is, a king or general would have more opportunities and complex decisions where they even have an opportunity to be moral, compared to a peasant who has fewer opportunities to be immoral or even make decisions.
All that said, professional work isn’t actually equivalent to moral behavior, and the poster pretty clearly explained that the many other aspects to his life are a much greater priority.
I’m not seeing the “more” and “less” moral potential as clearly as you do. That’s probably because I’m somewhat of a peasant myself. The peasant in my eyes has the same conundrum but worse: why be moral if your life sucks? And quite possibly because of it? (You’d possibly be better off plundering)
Every situation calls upon your character, no matter what position.
It seems there is a lot of focus on external results. Like any of that changes the calculus. What I’m taking about is true no matter what the results, even if you are alone in the universe. You (and only you) know what agreements you entered in and what constitutes proper and honorable work. No amount of mental gymnastic will pacify your soul (permanently).
The king’s role is to make executive decisions. He can make them for good and bad reasons, and good or bad results for himself personally and for his subjects. Even if he decides he wants to make the best decision for the best benefit to his subjects, the decisions are still difficult.
A modern analog could be making medical decisions for someone you love. There are many ways that you can avoid having to make those decisions, deferring to the defaults that doctors will perform, or asking a spiritual advisor to make the decision for you. Having someone else make the decisions probably won’t be as good, but it will be easier.
That doesn’t have anything to do with how hard someone works at a professional job when they have other more important priorities. However, I think good moral behavior even with entirely intrinsic motivations changes with the magnitude of responsibilities.
I’m less interested in “objective good” and more in “I know I have agreed to something and I am not doing it for [reasons]”.
I wonder how the poster feels about telling his employer about his decision to stop working on some days? Maybe he would be fine with it?
Again I don’t care about his employer, it could be the biggest prick in existence and deserving of whatever ugly came to him. This is about your own soul, so to speak.
In terms of philosophical perspective that seems to address intrinsic or extrinsic motivations for moral behavior, here being transformed into intrinsic or extrinsic motivations for excellence in professional work, not giving your best may be like simply avoiding difficult situations. That is, a king or general would have more opportunities and complex decisions where they even have an opportunity to be moral, compared to a peasant who has fewer opportunities to be immoral or even make decisions.
All that said, professional work isn’t actually equivalent to moral behavior, and the poster pretty clearly explained that the many other aspects to his life are a much greater priority.