Aim without three forces is dead

The Work has three lines of work in it, work on yourself, work in connection with other people in the Work, and work in connection with the Work itself. Unless these three lines are satisfied, at least provisionally, your aim will lead nowhere. There are three aspects to all Work aims.

If you only wish to work on yourself you will get nowhere, in fact you will become much worse than you were in ordinary life. So try to think what it means that an aim should have three forces in it, and what the three lines in the Work indicate. To work simply for other people and not on yourself is wrong. To work on yourself and regard other people as a nuisance is wrong. And again to work on yourself in connection with other people without thinking of the Work itself and what it needs is wrong.

Maurice Nicoll, “Self-Remembering" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 604)