दूरेण ह्यवरं कर्म बुद्धियोगाद्धनञ्जय।बुद्धौ शरणमन्विच्छ कृपणाः फलहेतवः॥
dūreṇa hy-avaraṃ karma buddhi-yogād dhanañjayabuddhau śaraṇam anviccha kṛpaṇāḥ phala-hetavaḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Work done for what it will fetch is far below work done from a settled mind. Take shelter in that mind, Arjuna. People who act for results are poor creatures.
In plain words
A hard word at the end: kṛpaṇāḥ — misers, wretched, pitiable.
Krishna is not saying people who work for results are wicked. He is saying they are impoverished, and the word carries pity as much as blame.
They are getting much less than they could have.
Where you've felt this · in growing older
Someone counts every hour against what it earned them. By any measure they are doing well. They have also spent thirty years never once in the hour they were in.
Going deeper
Kṛpaṇa is worth dwelling on. It means miserly, and in the Upanishads it is used for someone who dies without having understood what they were — a person who had a life and did not find out what it was.
The pity in the word is the point. This is not condemnation of the ambitious. It is a claim that they are underpaid, in a currency they have not noticed.
Buddhau śaraṇam anviccha — seek refuge in the discerning mind. Śaraṇa, refuge, is devotional vocabulary; it is the word Arjuna used at 2.7 when he surrendered, and the word Chapter 18 ends on. Here it is applied to buddhi rather than to Krishna.
That is a hint about how the Gita's paths relate. Taking refuge in clear understanding and taking refuge in God are not, in this book, two different moves.
And dūreṇa hi avaraṃ karma — by far inferior. Krishna is ranking. Work for results still counts as work, and the Gita never says do not do it. It says there is something available that is better and costs nothing extra.