Don't do dull work. Seriously. It will kill you. If your work doesn't matter to you, then you will either have to find out why it matters, or find something better to do that does matter.
I like to sit down with users and talk with them. Pour a cup of coffee and talk. You'll get the coolest stories and usually, when the 3rd cup is empty, you know exactly what needs fixing. You may program computers, but the point is to shape that friggin' turing machine equivalent so it helps people.
Since when do people have a choice? Instead of "don't do dull work" (which might translate to "don't do what you are asked to do"), I say you do the stuff you hate as fast as possible. Engage it with zeal, and get it the heck over with as soon as possible.
If you avoid doing stuff you hate, the cloud of having to do it lingers over you; you are not really avoiding it, you are prolonging it. Just get it over with and move on. You'll deliver it on time (or earlier), and will have gotten past the hurdle.
We often have more choice than you might think. Here's an example - today my boss wanted me to write up a C header file - essentially I had to take an interface supplied to us by a partner, and modify it so that it respected our coding standards. Now, I could have spent 4 hours of hand-editting this (rather large) file, or, I could spend 4 hours writing a custom pretty_print in Ruby to do it for me. One way of doing it is very boring, the other is rather interesting.
More generally, boring = automatable. If the code that you are writing, or the other task you are doing is boring, it is ripe for automating - so automate it! You'll never have to do the boring task again.
I agree with you on this one. If dull work must be done, you have to do it as fast as possible and get over it. Otherwise you keep thinking on it while doing normal stuff, so you never get to rest and you are probably wasting time with other stuff (just so you don't have to do what must be done)
I like your do-the-dull-stuff-first philosophy. But you can't discount the fact that we stay in dull, drab workplaces as a matter of choice.
If you hate your work we each have the choice to go somewhere else. Be an electrician, or a garbage collector. Move to a different company that offers more compelling work, or start one that does!
I'm just saying we do have the choice to do work we enjoy, even if it means we sacrifice some security to drop the status quo and never look back.
I agree - There is no need to do 'dull' work. If it takes up more than a small portion of your day, then change what you do.
If it's a job you have, then talk to your boss about what projects you would be excited to do, and see if you could work together to change the dull/exciting mix. Offer to work extra on the exciting/challenging project to prove your capabilities if that's a necessary step.
We had a programmer who was often on 'dull' assignments worked nights on a really big problem our company was having - our new product was sluggish, and needed some serious redesign. He spent a month working on a proof of concept on his own time, and then presented it to his boss, and then the programming team.
Now he's working on future architectures and pretty high level, fun and interesting stuff.
It's dull enough to post for help on a newsgroup. Do something about it. Change your trajectory.
I like to sit down with users and talk with them. Pour a cup of coffee and talk. You'll get the coolest stories and usually, when the 3rd cup is empty, you know exactly what needs fixing. You may program computers, but the point is to shape that friggin' turing machine equivalent so it helps people.