Ask HN: How do you cope with routine in your daily programming job?

I am currently studying Computer Science and am wondering about how to deal with the daily routine of a programming job in the future. Though I really enjoy programming and contribute regularly to open source projects, the perspective of programming 8 hours a day, 5 days a week seems exhausting. While learning new stuff is very interesting, I usually experience that the work becomes boring once you grasp the core concepts. For instance, consider building a web application: getting to know a new web framework and coming up with a sensible architecture is very fulfilling; however, after you figure it out, the rest of the work becomes pretty mechanical and repetitive. This is the reason I am very curious to know: How do you cope with routine in your daily programming job? How do you approach your work in order to find gratification in what you do?