[jbermudes]

> And yet... if you don't have fun, it will never get done

This was actually accounted for by the system of thought the parent comment is discussing.

Since virtue is the median between two vices, there is a middle ground between focusing on nothing and focusing on something to the point of exhaustion. The virtue of eutrapelia. Thomas Aquinas argues that just as the body needs rest when it is weary, so too does the soul when it becomes overburdened. And, like the body, the soul takes rest in a kind of pleasure we call 'play'.

[youssefabdelm]

Hm am I incorrect in my interpretation that what you're talking about is a kind of 'relaxation/rewarding oneself' after 'pushing oneself/working hard'?

What I'm talking about is a synthesis of play and work, where work becomes play, as opposed to playing, resting, or relaxing, after or as a 'reward for' work (which would not qualify as immediate reward. Immediate reward = in a fraction of a second.)

The 'work itself is the reward' if one carefully chooses what the work entails.

[jbermudes]

This is a great point because it presents the question of the relationship between one's perspective/emotional approach to a task and whether or not an act is intrinsically "playful", or "fun", and I'd have to think about that more.

The virtue ethicist would say that one should inculcate the virtue of caritas (love) which will enable them to approach any task with a positive attitude, such that something that would otherwise be annoying to do becomes meaningful or at least tolerable with a long-term goal of increasing the love of the other for whom you do the task for.

Catholic virtue ethicists (I can't speak for the others) do see one aspect of life as a combination of work and play: religious service. For example, the Sunday mass is both a liturgy (lit: "a work of the people") but also play: it is something to be done precisely because it need not be done. An omnipotent God doesn't need anything, including worship. It has no other outside purpose in theory than to be a celebration and is thus something meant to refresh in the way other forms of play refresh. In the Catholic tradition at least, this highest work is itself the highest form of play.