Neither the report your boss wants, nor the descriptions of activities for the family reunion, are contrived. Again, we disagree. The content itself may not co

Neither the report your boss wants, nor the descriptions of activities for the family reunion, are contrived. Again, we disagree. The content itself may not contrived[1], but the writing assignment, the form, is contrived. Your pleasure is not the final word on the value of an activity. No disagreement here. However, pleasure[2] is the first word, and, for my philosophy, the most significant in decision making. Contrived exercises are useful for improving your skills in many different fields. No disagreement here, either. However, we do, perhaps, disagree in the relative usefulness of exercises versus learn-by-doing. Moreover, if the field in question is not of ultimate interest, either method of learning has its usefulness devalued. They give you safety This appears to imply a false dichotomy. Safety isn't an absolute. My philosophy, especially wrt reputation, has become much less risk-averse with experience. This is what has drawn me to the startups more and more. If you refuse to write that boring report for your boss, you might lose your job. If you refuse to write the paper for class, you might fail the class, and not get to take the classes you are more interested in ...and good riddance. Despite the appearance of flippancy, it is exactly the early acceptance of such consequences that I have found to be the valuable skill. Perhaps there is a converse to the "do what you love" meme: don't do what you hate. Sometimes the trade-off between the temporary pain of boring work and the reward it brings is worth the pain. We likely only disagree on how often "sometimes" is. For my own experience, it has been close enough to "never" that I prefer to err on that side. Substitute "difficult" for "boring," and my conclusion reverses. [1] In the case of the boss, it can easily become so. [2] Perhaps "satisfaction" or "mental stimulation" would be a better description, since I don't believe we're talking about hedonism.