Video games offer a certainty of outcome you can't get in the real world. If you do X and Y, you'll get reward Z. X and Y might be difficult or tedious to do, b

Video games offer a certainty of outcome you can't get in the real world. If you do X and Y, you'll get reward Z. X and Y might be difficult or tedious to do, but you know that Z is there around the corner. Work often has situations where the outcome is much less certain. We have a problem we don't know how to solve so we need to try various possibilities. This can be fun if there is room for experimentation and we can try some things that fail without failing overall, but in situations with tight deadlines and uncertain outcomes, where you have a limited chance to attempt something and you don't know whether it will work, this is a recipe for stress.