Phil, you are absolutely right about the pleasure of certain kinds of "work" -- for example, there is (almost) nothing in the world that I enjoy more than "home improvement" projects on my trailer. I like that more than I like to relax!
But that is not dolce far niente -- it is dolce far something, the pleasure of doing a certain kind of task. Dolce far niente ("the sweetness of doing nothing") presupposes the intentional and temporary absence of productivity, a concept that was pretty foreign to me until we discovered RVing (and especially remote boondocking).
