यज्ञार्थात्कर्मणोऽन्यत्र लोकोऽयं कर्मबन्धनः।तदर्थं कर्म कौन्तेय मुक्तसंगः समाचर॥
yajñārthāt karmaṇo ’nyatra loko ’yaṃ karma-bandhanaḥtad-arthaṃ karma kaunteya mukta-saṅgaḥ samācara
Word by word
The verse says
Work binds a person, except when it is done as an offering. So do your work as an offering, Arjuna, holding on to none of it.
In plain words
Here is the mechanism, and it turns on one word.
All work binds you - except work done as yajña, as an offering. Do it that way and the binding does not happen.
Then the same instruction as always: mukta-saṅgaḥ, free of the sticking.
Where you've felt this · in family life
You make the same dal on Tuesday for yourself and on Thursday for your mother when she visits. The pan is the same, the steps are the same, the timing is the same. Tuesday is something you get through. Thursday is not. Nothing in the recipe accounts for the difference.
Going deeper
Yajña is the key term of this stretch of the chapter, and it needs care.
Its literal meaning is sacrifice - the fire ritual, offerings poured into flame, the central religious act of the Vedic world. Krishna is about to take that word and stretch it a long way.
What a sacrifice does structurally is this: you produce something and you do not keep it. The grain goes into the fire. The point of the act is that its product leaves your hands.
So when Krishna says do all your work yajñārthāt - for the sake of offering - he is describing a shape, not prescribing a ritual. Any action where you do the work and release the result has that shape.
This is how the Gita repeatedly handles inherited religion. It does not abolish the ritual and it does not simply endorse it. It identifies what the ritual was doing and says: that can be done everywhere, including here, including now, including by someone with a bow in his hand.