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Hello - I am new to less wrong and I thoroughly enjoyed this short essay. Comments:
I agree with you that many people, unfortunately, equate pain with work. The viewpoint is actually absurd given that work is an objective measure of output and pain is an internal state.
According to Buddhism, pain is the inevitable result of expectations and desires, because anyone who has these is bound to be disappointed at least once or (more likely) many times. In the case of work or student life, pain is caused by the expectation of happiness being thwarted, or the desire to be doing something more pleasant. When viewed from this perspective, it's obvious that pain will inevitably reduce output, and therefore the presence of pain is a sure sign that LESS work is being done.
When a person is producing output (working) in an arena that they find pleasing, they experience no pain because they are doing a thing that they love. This is why musicians spend hours practicing and barely notice the passage of time. They are objectively working, but they love the work. When a professor challenges a student by giving that student a difficult assignment, the student will probably experience pain in the completion of that assignment for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph - it was imposed on him, not chosen by him. Naturally, if the student loves the subject matter, the student will do better work and experience no pain....which brings me to my next point:
People who are experiencing pain in their work or student life are in the wrong business.
While the pain=work fallacy is pervasive and destructive, I want to bring up a related fallacy that is even worse - the idea that "if I suffer through this now, I'll be happy later." In other words, if I experience enough pain now, I'll never have to experience pain again. To the contrary - since pain is a sign that someone is in the wrong line of work, pain now is a sure sign of more pain later. Compounding this, when one arrives at the point where he/she was sure they would no longer experience pain, and it's still happening, it causes even more pain.
I feel like the best "work" we all need to be doing is finding our correct place in the universe.