For Tommaso, no draft was ever perfect, no project ever completed, no idea ever worked out in a full and satisfactory manner. The limits to work were set by deadlines, not by exhaustion or satisfaction or even less by personal need. Then came the motivation, the purpose of working.
He used to say that people must decide early on if they want “to earn, to learn or to serve”; in other words, if their goal in life is material reward in business, intellectual pleasure in academic research and teaching, or the moral satisfaction of serving the collective good as a civil servant.