In addition to exploring why people love games and other high skill activities, it discusses the idea that we can learn how to turn every day tasks into activities that evoke the same reward centers. It doesn’t just dive into “people like games”, or “people like achieving hard things”, but it delves into why, and tries to explain some of the mechanisms.

It made me start to see daily mundane/boring tasks differently. They’re things I have to do anyway, so I can choose to approach them with a mindset that actually evokes enjoyment. Might as well.

Video games used to be my primary outlet. These days, it’s photography and writing. Over time, cooking/baking have transformed from tasks I begrudgingly did to tasks I find deeply rewarding. I still play video games and my point isn’t to disparage them, but the more things in my life that I can move into the “things I enjoy” category, the better my life has become, on average. And part of that had more to do with changing how I engaged with tasks than the specific tasks I was doing.