Why is work called 'work' and not 'fun'?
Because they have to pay you to do it!
This is a really dumb joke, but it illustrates the assumption we have: You get paid for doing things that you wouldn’t otherwise do.
The unsaid corollary is that if you won’t get paid, it’s not worth doing.
I think this normalization conditions us not to question the premise. What if getting paid for something has no relation to the value of what we do? What if the payment is instead a function of marketing?
There’s also value to yourself and to others. Just because what you do might not be valuable to others doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to yourself. And if it’s valuable to yourself, you might be wrong about how valuable it is to others.