We are going around in circles. When we are doing something, we won't be able to do a thousand other things we could be doing. Only the future can tell whether that turns out to be great or not, however, how we react to those experiences is under our control.

Millions of people live about the way you have described, doing manual chores (perhaps out of necessity), and may be they are missing out on the joys of commenting on HN or may be I am indeed missing out on something when I eschew some degree of manual work (I have experienced this).

The point is not automating stuff, it is what do you do when you have automated the boring stuff that is matter - do you just scroll your feed ? Not to mention that some amount of boredom is necessary to make us value the interesting aspect of life.

OP is more correct than you realize. Your judgement of how life was is in the past, while what your life is in the now.

umm, its like the hallmark of adulthood to learn that life is a lot about doing things you don't want to do. There's obviously a spectrum. And I don't mean forcibly through coercion. I mean yeah it sucks to wake up early and clean up and get your exercise in and be accountable to your team or take your kid to basketball practice or feed the cat. Or go out your way to pick up that trash someone else threw out, or let someone go ahead of you in traffic even though you were there first or take the stairs because someone is moving in today and needs the elevator more than you or take your dad to dialysis and listen to him mention the same things 5 times, there and back or not just eat anything you want whenever you want.

I don't know it sounds like you're advocating for doing only things you want to do. Automate everything else. It's all philosophy at this point. Life doesn't really work that way "and it shouldn't" - where shouldn't is wholly in the philosophy category, of course.