Rationality is self-contradictory, and part of your own motivations will always be irrational.
As a consequence, at some level, you have to stop worrying about economic consequences of your actions on you. It is, in particular, rejection of utility maximization as a human motivator, because there has to be something more, something that cannot be measured.
And empirically, it seems that people who we recognize as creators or inventors have mostly not done the things they have done for pure economic profit, but they have been driven by something else, that cannot be explained in economic terms.
As a consequence, at some level, you have to stop worrying about economic consequences of your actions on you. It is, in particular, rejection of utility maximization as a human motivator, because there has to be something more, something that cannot be measured.
And empirically, it seems that people who we recognize as creators or inventors have mostly not done the things they have done for pure economic profit, but they have been driven by something else, that cannot be explained in economic terms.
Also related to this is my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964404