Summary
Autonomy: choosing what you work on, when you work on it and with whom,
Mastery: working towards bettering yourself in some dimension under optimal working conditions, and
Purpose: working towards something greater than yourself.
An intransitive relation is one in which this pattern does not hold.
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
In Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice, he argues that our desire to expand
our available alternatives is actually making us less satisfied with whatever we end
up choosing.