Productivity is a cause and a calling all unto itself. Productivity is the desire to build, to create, to solve and to achieve. Most of all, productivity is the means to the end that is self-sustainment.

Like many conservatives, I couldn’t wait to get out of college to start tackling the challenges of private industry while earning my own money so that I wasn’t beholden to my parents or anyone else. When I got out of school, I took a job managing a convenience store, just to set out on my own.

Working any job – no matter where, the pay level or the task – is admirable and productive. Conservatives applaud the worker who heads to McDonald’s every day to work. Those who would make fun of that person create a stigma surrounding those types of jobs. In doing so, they devalue all of the valuable skills one learns, and make it embarrassing to work them.

But “burger-flipper” jobs are, in some ways, more valuable than high paying corporate jobs. To young people who are entering the workforce for the first time, they teach important lessons like showing up on time, earning money, taxation, working with others, and accountability.

To those who are more advanced in their life and may even be supporting a family, they build self-esteem, teach responsibility to the children of the parent going there to work, and reinforce self-reliance.

Life isn’t always easy, but those who work hardest to make ends meet and provide for themselves – and their dependents – truly understand the value of personal responsibility.

Work, in any capacity, is good for the soul. But in general terms, conservatives are drawn to the private sector. In the private sector, you exchange your work or your talent for another’s money. It’s an even exchange that mutually beneficial. And it fulfills the desire to build and be rewarded for what you build.

As an extension of the desire to build, conservatives are drawn to development. Development doesn’t mean finding a nice pristine plot of land and putting something ugly on it. Often times it means finding a dilapidated area of a city or town and turning it into something good again.

Nonprofits are great, and certainly anyone who wants to spend their time working toward whatever cause they want should do it.

Nonprofits that fight disease or give to those less fortunate are important to society – as evidenced by the amount of charitable donations they earn from liberals and conservatives alike.

Where nonprofits start to become a problem is when they exist solely to thwart the will of the people and litigate an idea, proposal or development to the point where even after being voted on in the affirmative, it never sees the light of day.

That, alone, rubs most conservatives the wrong way. But what irritates us the most is when those nonprofits routinely attack the values and standards that many hold dear.

Instead of organizing and hiring a team of lawyers, often one can accomplish much more by working directly with the individuals and entities that can directly affect the cause in question.

When conservatives see a person who has suffered an injustice, they go right to the source of the issue and work to resolve THAT issue.

Those who make a career out of fighting often will take offenses that happen to an individual and decide that no one must ever face that injustice again – based on the assumption that it happens all the time, when it may not. So it goes from a smaller problem with a possible resolution to a massive, nationwide problem that requires a series of laws and a “fight.”

Productivity of any kind is best realized when there’s a realistic plan with achievable goals. Too often, it seems that when nonprofits engage a cause, it is to disrupt the activity of everyone else. And that is not productive.