Yes it becomes a matter of interepretation. But to make an analogy, I enjoy my work through the same mechanisms as I enjoy solving sudokus. It's not that I need

Yes it becomes a matter of interepretation. But to make an analogy, I enjoy my work through the same mechanisms as I enjoy solving sudokus. It's not that I need to actually keep or use the result. The reward comes from the mental challenge. Too easy or too difficult sudokus arne't rewarding. The easy ones are basically just writing digits without thinking for a while (i.e. boilerplate work). The difficult ones are often frustrating and too much work for little progress. The sweetspot is something that offers some challenge but not so much that it's frustrating. A simple solution to a simple problem will always be just boilerplate. It will be work that can often effectively be automated (But you can't try to automate it because then you have traded your simple problem for a more difficult problem of automation!). To me it sounds extremely boring and unrewarding. I didn't quite understand the gist of this article. What is the left out bit of the title? "You don't need to work on hard problems to...."? I immediately thought "be happy". I didn't think "be successful" (or similar).