Work should feel like play

Several reads / videos that I have came across recently all converge to the same idea: work should feel like play.

Richard Feynman, in his book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" wrote:

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.

When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Gurthrie Govan, who Rick Beato dubbed rock's scariest guitarist, when told by his fan that he must have put in a tremendous amount of work (1st comment in this video), without missing a beat, replied:

If it felt like work, I wouldn't have done it.

Naval Ravikant, in his tweetstorm on how to get rich (without getting lucky), quite literally responding to the subject, wrote:

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

Paul Graham very accurately observed that adults define work as "do things" and play as "do what you wanted" in his essay How To Do What You Love but he believes that it is possible to love your work:

Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there.

And his another piece How To Do Great Work also captured how curiosity is the key to doing great work:

Curiosity is the key to all four steps in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them. The whole process is a kind of dance with curiosity.