Games and leisure activities are a great way to build proficiency with a new technology. Then, when a need arises, that mastery can be put to good use... But that would not have been possible without having fooled around with the technology beforehand.
I learned a good bit about data processing while reformatting 78-column BBS text files and manuals for printing in full-page-width proportional font (so as to save my father's printer paper).
"people will use internet for work"
And yet here we all are ;-).
My current salary is easily double what it would have been had I not aggressively subjected myself to the basic philosophy espoused here, and on Slashdot before it.