[devoply]

Or an easy problem. Or any problem. Or social work. Or volunteer-ism. Or cycling. Or wandering the streets of your city. Honestly the work based culture has dulled the creativity people to such an extent that they can't think of anything outside of work. Or maybe human males are wired for this sort of thing. I dunno.

The reason people become drug addicts or alcoholics is that it's painful to be outside of the social culture. And work is the social culture of our time. It's the only thing that makes people feel relevant. We need to invent alternative forms of feeling relevant.

[umberway]

By 'hard' problem I mean that it has depth, not that it's unpleasant. A stream of easy problems could work but it's less reliable because when there's a dry spell then outcome (1) will be scratching at the door.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" -- JFK