I have the experience of having been involved in a wide variety of jobs over the years. From very demanding physical labor and factory work to cushy office jobs and consulting. They all take their toll whether it be from physical hazards such as inhaling fumes to the more common boredom that many people feel in the current work environment. I am glad to be done with some of the rougher work but there is definitely something to be said about the other end of the spectrum. Specifically, brain work.

When you work physically with your body to accomplish something such as a factory job, it often feels mostly boring and a waste of life. I have some more thoughts on this, but will save that for a special thought session in the future. Anyways, take that work out of the shop and into a job that is physically demanding but also requires careful-thought and your time transforms into a work of love. For example, Amish woodworkers who hand build things such as furniture are often proud of their finished product. Taking the monotony out of it really seems to transform the work and thoughts surrounding the daily tasks of producing that work.

Taking it a step even further, doing brain work such as working on building websites and various types of engineering have the same type of final appeal at the end of the finished product, but get a large part of their pleasure from directly removing the monotony of having to do all the required processes by hand.

The big difference between the physical but brainy job and pure brain work is a mater of scale. The pure brain work can scale up exponentially which explains why engineers often find themselves highly agreeing with slogans like the I'm an engineer to save time let's just assume that I'm never wrong shirt and the solving problems engineering t-shirt talking about fixing problems you didn’t know you had in ways you cannot understand. It gives these individuals a taste of feeling like a God with how much work they can do with their skills. They can control countless operations and do the work that would require potentially tens of thousands of workers - the kind that would be bored out of their mind doing the various tasks.