Paul Millerd, in his book “The Pathless Path”, poses a great question.
Why the hell are so many grown adults spending their time on obviously pointless tasks?
I believe it’s a mere continuation of our educational system.
Think about a child going through the normal school curriculum. Regardless of the subject, the learning strategy is the same: read, memorize, write.
Are these the right tasks to do in order to promote the best learning experience? No! There are some parts of the whole curriculum where that’s the best strategy, sure, but for the best part of a curriculum, it’s a mediocre strategy at best.
But that’s what you’re supposed to do, so, you build this unconscious familiarity with the feeling of doing mediocre work, doing what someone told you to do, regardless of how meaningful it is.
After 12+ years of going through the motions, doing the “mediocre” thing, you end up carrying that familiarity and mindset to whatever you do, including work.
Revolutionizing our education is a way to guarantee that, in the long enough term, we can have adults having a career where meaning is one of the most important indicators when coming up with tasks.