[kuratkull]

There is _always_ more grunt work to be done in our field. The employer would be happy to let you churn out solutions to tickets forever, but this only serves the company, not you. Doing Extra is acknowledging this and trying to think outside the box for the benefit of both parties.

Also, your employer probably already has someone doing good quality Extra work (to move the company forward in the long term), so it's not critical that you do Extra work. But if you find something like that rewarding you can start doing it and kudos (in several forms) should follow.

I also think Extra is very strongly dependent on your area of control. If you only have control over a very small segment, then there might not be much room for interesting Extra. But if you have control over some high-level processes, then that's where the interesting solutions can really make a difference.

[IanCal]

It's not about taking on grunt work, just because you finished some assigned tasks quicker than the person (/team) who assigned them thought it would take doesn't mean the next most important things are grunt work.

If it's beneficial for the company (and I agree that this kind of experimental work is) then make it part of the tasks. Don't only do it when your estimates are wrong!

[kuratkull]

Maybe that kind of work is beneficial only if it's done by people who find it interesting enough and thus do it on their own accord? I know a bunch of people who don't like this kind of exploration so including this in their task would probably make them start looking for easier tickets/jobs.