कार्यमित्येव यत्कर्म नियतं क्रियतेऽर्जुन।सङ्गं त्यक्त्वा फलं चैव स त्यागः सात्त्विको मतः॥
kāryam ity eva yat karma niyataṃ kriyate ‘rjunasaṅgaṃ tyaktvā phalaṃ caiva sa tyāgaḥ sāttviko mataḥ
Word by word
The verse says
When work that is genuinely yours is done simply because it is to be done, Arjuna, with attachment and fruit let go, that letting go is the clear kind.
In plain words
The third kind, and the good one.
The work is done. Not avoided, not postponed. What is let go is the attachment and the claim on the result.
And the reason given is the plainest possible: because it is to be done. No further justification is offered, because at this point none is needed.
Where you've felt this · in parenting
Your mother has made breakfast at roughly the same hour for about thirty years. There is no morning on which she is pleased with herself about it. She is not keeping score and she would be puzzled to be thanked for it specifically. The work is entirely real and there is nothing of her stuck to it.
Going deeper
Doing the thing and dropping the claim on it, at the same time, is the whole instruction of this book in one line.
It is worth seeing what is not being asked. Not that you stop caring whether the work is good. Not that you become indifferent to the people it is for. Only the fruit is released: the credit, the outcome, the account of what you are owed for it.
Chapter 2 said exactly this and said it early, which means the book has now spent sixteen chapters returning to one idea from different angles. That repetition is not padding. It is how something gets past the part of you that agrees with it and into the part of you that does it.
And the test of whether it has landed is small. When the work goes unnoticed, does it feel different to do?