The key is being able to find some way to take ownership of whatever you do, the equivalent of signing your name on your work.
I live in Maynard, Massachusetts about a half mile from the large mill that Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) called home during the boom times. That mill has one of the oldest continuously operating clock towers in New England.
I have lived here for more than 20 years, and didn't know much about it. They gave tours a few months back so my wife and I went in. It was great. It had this beautifully maintained mechanism with cogs and gears and took up as much real estate as a dining room table...when you looked at it, you got this oddly discordant simultaneous effect of high technology contrasted with the beauty of an antique.
But what struck me most was the table that the entire mechanism sat on.
It was a beautifully crafted wooden table with curvaceous victorian legs.
Nowadays, we would pour a concrete slab or build a metal bolt together table. But this was a beautiful, attractive and well built piece of furniture for this utilitarian device.
Someone was tasked to make a table, and they could have done ANYTHING. Nobody was going to go up to look at that clock tower mechanism and admire the table, they would all be looking at the mechanism. Everyone who I was there with was.
But the person who built that table built it as if anyone who looked at it for the next 200 years would appreciate that whoever built it cared for and appreciated his work.
And that was good enough for him.