What the Bhagavad Gita says about work
The Gita was composed in a setting where the serious religious options involved leaving: renouncing the household, giving up work, going to the forest. Its central practical claim is that this is unnecessary, and the claim is made to a man who cannot leave.
18.11 removes the escape route by pointing out that nobody wearing a body can stop acting anyway. Breathing is action, sitting still is action, choosing not to answer is action. So the question cannot be how much you do. It has to be how the doing is held.
What follows from that is karma yoga: the same work, done without the grip on what it returns. 2.50 calls yoga skill in action, which is a strange thing to call a spiritual state until you notice how much of the cost of a task is the second job it is secretly doing, establishing something about you. 18.45 goes furthest, saying a person reaches fulfilment by being absorbed in the work that is genuinely his own.
The verses 22
2.47
Your claim is on the action alone, never on its fruits.
2.48
Stand in yoga and do your work, Arjuna, letting go of the holding-on.
2.49
Work done for what it will fetch is far below work done from a settled mind.
2.50
A person joined to that mind sheds both the good he has done and the bad, right here in this life.
3.4
You do not get free of action by not starting anything.
3.5
Nobody stays still even for a moment.
3.7
But the one who gets the senses in hand with his mind, Arjuna, and then sets his body to work without holding on to it - that one is doing far better.
3.8
Do the work that is yours to do.
3.9
Work binds a person, except when it is done as an offering.
3.19
So do the work that is there to be done, always, without holding on to it.
3.20
Janaka and others reached the goal by action alone.
3.25
The unknowing act because they are attached to what they are doing.
4.18
Whoever sees not-acting in action, and acting in not-acting, is the one with understanding among people.
4.20
Having let go of holding on to what his actions bring, always content, depending on nothing - he does nothing at all, even while fully at work.
5.8
The one who is joined, who knows how things are, thinks: I do nothing at all - while seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing.
5.10
Whoever acts placing his actions in the infinite, having given up attachment, is not stained by wrong - as a lotus leaf is not wetted by water.
5.11
With the body, with the mind, with the understanding, and even with the bare senses, those in practice act, giving up attachment, for their own clearing.
6.1
Krishna said: Whoever does the work that has to be done without leaning on what it will fetch - he is the renouncer and he is the practitioner.
18.5
Offering, giving and discipline must not be given up.
18.6
But even these actions should be done with attachment and fruits let go.
18.11
Nobody wearing a body can give up actions completely.
18.23
Work that is in order, done without clinging, without liking or disliking, by someone not reaching for the fruit: that work is called clear.