Is my brain a utility minimizer? Or, the mechanics of labeling things as "work" vs. "fun"

What it seemed to be, was the brain categorizing activities into "work" and "fun" boxes.

I suspect the rule brain uses when categorizing is "Is there stress associated with the activity? Do I feel anxiety when I imagine I could do it wrong, or not finish it on time? Yes -> work. No -> fun."

Nothing changes about the activity except the addition of more utility

This would be true for a rational machine, but you have emotions. Adding positive financial utility may also also add negative emotional utility. It's not just "if I make this work, I will have extra $5000" but also "if I don't make this work, I will not be able to pay my bills, which could lead to many problems".

I can understand akrasia, wanting the happiness now and hyperbolically discounting what happens later

"Hyperbolic discounting" is IMHO a red herring. Yes, it exists in some situations. But many cases of akrasia are actually caused by emotional factors. Fix the emotions and the akrasia will go away. It's only Vulcan Rationalists pretending that everything is about hyperbolic discounting, because it allows them to debate mathematical equations instead of emotions.

I would really like to learn where is the dividing line between which kinds of added value create this effect and which ones don't (like money obviously does, and immediate enjoyment obviously doesn't).

A thought experiment: Imagine that there is a website that calculates some abstract "credits" for doing programming tasks. For example, you make a program, send it to the website owners, they will look at source code and give you 150 credits, because that's how they feel about the program's complexity and quality and whatever other criteria they evaluate. It's unconnected to the world outside: you can send what you wrote at work (let's assume there are no legal obstacles), or what you wrote at free time, anything. Then you could see "oh, I already earned 500 credits this month, I have 23450 total credits, and that makes me the 123th highest ranking programmer on the website".

My prediction: These "credits" would be classified as FUN. That is, no negative feelings connected. Despite the fact that you sometimes send them your work code.

A few years later: The website calculating "credits" becomes popular and people talk about it a lot. Your boss tells you: "If you can you get 50000 total credits, I will double your salary. However, if someone with better ranking would apply for your job, I will fire you and take them instead. I hope you feel more motivated now!" (Let's assume that the firing would be perfectly legal.)

My prediction: These "credits" would be reclassified as WORK. Now they are connected to some negative feelings. Despite the fact that you can still send them your free-time code. Actually, I suspect that even some of the free-time projects would suddenly start feeling like WORK when you realize that making them and sending them to the website could bring you the "credits".

My take is that what matters in fun versus work is where the locus of control is situated. That is, where does your subjective experience tell you the source of you doing that activity comes from.

If it comes from within, then you count it as fun. If it comes from the outside, you count it as work.

This explains your feeling, and explains the comments in this thread as well. When past-self sets goals for you, you are no longer the center of locus of control. Then it feels like negatively connoted work.

That's how it is for me anyway.

You are using utility in the economic sense and not in the decision theorethic sense. If you frame it as "duty" vs "play" it becomes way more understandable.

A utility that you explicitly calculate on a paper can feel like an outside force that forces you to do something. Something that you have internalised as part of your soul and who you are is more just self-expression. While the concept of utility has been used to refer to both it only really ablies to the latter (for example when you turn preferences into ordinal numerical values). A agent not seeing that work has utility isn't in any way contradictory or paradoxical. If you keep your concept more stringent there is a step from going from dollar production into utility. If dollar production isn't the main utlity component then it is not surprising that there is a disconnect with them. This might have the same structure as the question of "free will" as you do not feel that it is your person doing the activity when it is your "employee" doing it as part of your job duties, that is in a sense you are doing "unvoluntary work" (while simultaneusly thinking that if you didn't like your job you would quit, in a sense also believing in voluntary working). It is easier to stop play if you feel like it but doing a similiar decision not to work today as you don't feel like it is a more responcibility calling enterpreneour level decision that can require doing things that might be in conflict with work ethics (or it calls in a more holistic "employee thriving" advanced management theory). It is somewhat popular to hold a stance that you need to work even if you some particular day you don't feel like it.

There is also a well known effect where two groups were given a puzzle and one group was given monetary rewards for completing it and the other wasn't. When afterwards they were given free access to the puzzle those that were not rewarded engaged with it and those that were rewarded did not. I believe the associated theory is about how explcit external rewards destroy intrinsic motivation. It could also be termed how a job were you normally get 10$ for doing you now get 0$ is clearly not worth the effort, the rewarded people tended to evalaute the gain by monetary terms.

You might be doing a somewhat reverse process. Because it generates money it can't be fun because work by definition isn't play.

The obvious question is: what can one do about this?

Off the cuff: perhaps you've got it backwards?

I've thought about this as well, but my observation ended up going a different direction: work as a category only has higher utility because it's unfun in some way. Everyone else would rather be doing fun things, but the unfun stuff needed for survival still has to get done somehow. Work generally has higher utility because other people are willing to pay you to do it so they can do the fun things instead.

What phase are you at in each project? Are things flowing equally well?

I find that different parts of programming, even on the same project, can be joyous and hair-pullingly frustrating.

Work is a failure case, a hole you dig yourself out of. You're doing things in the fun category when you see a danger coming. Your fun will end because you'll be hungry or lack a place to sleep if you dont fix the problem. This is especially true of people who can choose how much work they do and money to make instead of being trained into a schedule. "Work expands to fill all available time" --Parkinson's law. Its like a gas that spreads until you need to do a little more.

From my experience the main difference "fun" and "work" is that in the latter you have things like deadlines, limited resources, judgement and effect of current performance on future prospects. All this affects pretty directly social status and (to a lesser extent) survival. I think, the main failure mode here is that the brain reacts extremely sensitive to the first derivative of social status.