«شَقْلُهْ عَلَى قَدِّ بَقْلُهْ»

In one reading, the saying holds that effort should match what a task actually requires. A farmer working a shaduf, the counterweighted well-sweep, lifts only as much water as his small plot needs, so anyone who complains that he is doing too little is answered: the job is small, and the work fits it.

The more frequent reading takes the word for the crop to mean the grain a worker receives as his wage. Here the phrase laments a hand-to-mouth existence. Whatever someone earns from his toil feeds him and no more, leaving nothing to save or to spend on other needs.

Use the first sense to defend modest effort as sufficient for a modest need, especially when someone calls the work too little. Use the second, more common sense to remark that a laborer's pay covers only his meals, with nothing left over.