It would be nice to have a "one and done" effort, where we didn't have to be so faithfully persistent. (Quite a few home improvement offerings cater to this desire.)
On the other hand, we're not so keen on "one and done" blessings: we like having blessings like our food supplied persistently.
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Philosopher Hannah Arendt distinguishes between circular tasks like these -- which she calls 'labor' -- and other sorts of tasks she calls 'work' that leave behind a durable good. She thought labor was important to human happiness because it gave us something that was difficult and depressing to contrast with the pride we feel from doing our (great?) works.
However, the categories are somewhat mutable. I read a Zen writer once talking about how there is this old saying that you should 'learn chopping wood and drawing water' as a form of meditation, but that it is now easy to enjoy chopping wood or drawing water because it's a rare experience that gives you a sense of union with our ancestors. Today, it's really washing the dishes and doing laundry.
If we get to the point that automation is really also doing all the dishes and laundry, maybe it will be a fun form of meditation to do them yourself once in a while. Like the way people really enjoy historical re-enactments where they dress up in old clothing and cook on open fires in traditional ways -- once labor, now special.
Some years back a trio of Tibetan monks at the farmer's market on the Capital Square were rubbing long metal funnels with a rod to dispense small amounts of brightly colored sand into a mandala. It took them hours as they worked with fascinating care.
I wasn't present when they finished. They dumped it all into a bucket.
(In the Western tradition, I read that at least one of the desert fathers spent his days weaving baskets, and then destroying them in the evening. The important thing was the work, not to have a lot of baskets for sale.)
Even our "durable goods" are ephemeral.
In the pre-hipster era my being bearded attracted comments and questions.
One of my stock replies was "I tried shaving once, it didn't 'stick'."
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