This seems to me like a simplification which focuses on one part of the problem, and ignores another part. For some people it will work great (those who have the other part solved), for others it will not work (those who have problems in the other part).
It is not just how interesting or boring is the activity X for you, but also how much do the other circumstances in your life allow you to focus on X. Imagine that you intrinsically love X, but whenever you do it, you get punished by an external force. Gradually your mind will start associating X with unpleasant feelings, and after a while you will find you are no longer attracted to the idea of doing X. A different person starting with the same love towards X, but in a more supportive environment, would have it easier to persevere.
It is not necessarily the whole environment that has an impact on you, but people who matter most. If your parents disapprove of X, but your friends give you admiration and love for your X abilities, it will be relatively easy to emotionally overcome the disapproval of your parents.
Maybe it is my own specific problem—I have no idea how frequent it is—but I find it really difficult to find people (in offline world) who would encourage me in doing what I want to do. People around me either don’t care about what I do, or don’t care about my preferences but have their own ideas about what I should do instead.
Before “you should have fun” is “you should have an environment that supports you in having fun doing X”. People are social animals.
More general: “you should have an environment that is conductive to you doing X”. Lots of people thrive in adversity, and a notable minority aren’t very social. This may actually be true for most people in limited situations… I was very unlikely to clean up other people’s liter and dog poop until I moved into a neighborhood where 1) no one cleans up at all and 2) people thought it was weird to do so. (If instead they had thought that they should clean up, but were too lazy, I would have seen the mess as a fitting punishment for their laziness, and would only have cleaned up that which directly impinged on my immediate environment). Of course, I don’t give this as an example of a healthy environment, just as an example where a motivation to do productive work is not dependent on social support.
This seems to me like a simplification which focuses on one part of the problem, and ignores another part. For some people it will work great (those who have the other part solved), for others it will not work (those who have problems in the other part).
It is not just how interesting or boring is the activity X for you, but also how much do the other circumstances in your life allow you to focus on X. Imagine that you intrinsically love X, but whenever you do it, you get punished by an external force. Gradually your mind will start associating X with unpleasant feelings, and after a while you will find you are no longer attracted to the idea of doing X. A different person starting with the same love towards X, but in a more supportive environment, would have it easier to persevere.
It is not necessarily the whole environment that has an impact on you, but people who matter most. If your parents disapprove of X, but your friends give you admiration and love for your X abilities, it will be relatively easy to emotionally overcome the disapproval of your parents.
Maybe it is my own specific problem—I have no idea how frequent it is—but I find it really difficult to find people (in offline world) who would encourage me in doing what I want to do. People around me either don’t care about what I do, or don’t care about my preferences but have their own ideas about what I should do instead.
Before “you should have fun” is “you should have an environment that supports you in having fun doing X”. People are social animals.
More general: “you should have an environment that is conductive to you doing X”. Lots of people thrive in adversity, and a notable minority aren’t very social. This may actually be true for most people in limited situations… I was very unlikely to clean up other people’s liter and dog poop until I moved into a neighborhood where 1) no one cleans up at all and 2) people thought it was weird to do so. (If instead they had thought that they should clean up, but were too lazy, I would have seen the mess as a fitting punishment for their laziness, and would only have cleaned up that which directly impinged on my immediate environment). Of course, I don’t give this as an example of a healthy environment, just as an example where a motivation to do productive work is not dependent on social support.