Maybe the jobs themselves were not enjoyable physically but the satisfaction of a day’s work was.

Many jobs also improved your fitness unless you were injured. Anything manual required more aerobic capacity and strength hence making you more fit.

Modern people are sleep deprived, weak, and aerobically deficient unless they spend time outside of work focusing on these things. We simply aren’t meant to sit around all day staring at a screen only to then sit and drive a car.

I’d argue modern life is much more comfortable but counterintuitively there is a constant discomfort that is chronic because of it.

Another way to think about this is that humans are meant to suffer everyday. If you are not forcing it through physical exertion it slowly leaks and if it is not exhausted it is constant.

> but the satisfaction of a day’s work was.

Rose colored glasses. “We won’t starve today” is not spiritually fulfilling. It’s survival.

People romanticize the past. Modern life is more comfortable specifically because everyone isn’t struggling to survive. (Obviously some still are.)

> Many jobs also improved your fitness unless you were injured.

That’s a real big “if”. You can go get a construction job right now. It will get you more fit. But it will probably also get you injured, especially over the long term.