After reading your comment, my first instinct was to disagree but I think there is actually some truth to it. I find so much satisfaction in just doing rote work sometimes. Not all time, mind you but there’s a certain peaceful state when your’re mindfully and even effortlessly doing something over and over. Sort of like grinding in RPG games
I couldn't find a reference to the specific case study but there's definitely human factors/ergonomics research about this - one example was about a factory introduced task rotations which should increase meaning of work and therefor productivity and operator retention, but it resulted in increased absenteeism because operators could no longer let their minds wander like they used to during routine repetitive tasks and burned out quicker. The point of all these case studies was to not randomly change a work situation using generic best practices before understanding it because there's no one size fits all solution.
Right, it’s a break. Actual thinking is like a physical activity, and we need breaks. In the past we had more frequent and longer breaks even if we were diligent, because we could leverage our knowledge. Increasingly we have to leverage our knowledge and actively think for almost the entire workday. I’m not sure that we can adapt to that the same way we’d adapt to jogging all day.
