“Opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison
'Work' is a hard word to define. One person's idea of work can be another person's idea of leisure. Something that you dislike doing at work, you might quite enjoy in a leisure setting.
Is work still work if you don't get paid for it? People work productively in all areas of life without being paid. This unpaid work includes:
housework in households, child care and shopping for the home, volunteer and community work, work done free of charge (favours for others), etc.
What if you didn't work and you had every day to yourself? You could choose to go to the beach, watch television, go to the movies, go shopping, read books, visit friends, visit places of interest, go out for meals, play sport. This all sounds nice, but you'd need at least some money to do most of these things. Relaxing and doing what you please is great for a holiday, but after a while the pleasure can wear off and you can feel aimless and bored.
The benefits you get from paid and unpaid work are strongly linked to your values. When you know what your values are regarding work, you can work out what you hope to achieve through working what your overall ambitions are, set meaningful goals for yourself,
choose jobs that will satisfy you in ways that are deeper than your 'hip pocket' and understand why you feel dissatisfied in a job that doesn't fit with your values.