Unfortunately, very few people have the option to only work on things they enjoy. Even professors get stuck doing things they don't want to do, and that aren't valuable, but there is no choice unless you have at least a few million in the bank.
Which programmer enjoys typing, or which builder enjoys the physical activity itself? It's about the way to the end result, getting from nothing to something, or not? For the professor it would be the understanding and success of his pupils.
The stuff in between nothing and something, especially what you don't like, could be an opportunity if theres nothing in reach that already solves the problem.
> Which programmer enjoys typing, or which builder enjoys the physical activity itself?
That's actually a reason to get better at these things, though--the better your fundamentals are, the less attention you have to pay to them and the more attention you have left over for actually thinking about what you're doing. When I'm coding, typing is the last thing on my mind--I just think code and my muscle memory translates it into keystrokes. And I'm a Vim user.
But wouldn't you prefer to just being able to connect your tested UI prototype and data model without having to translate it into code yourself? That's what I'm doing when I code, I translate things that already exists into a different language. I'd rather focus on other things if I could.
One of the reasons to improve productivity - if you really have to do stuff you don't like, do it swift and effectively, so you can quickly get back to more important things.
