How to develop interest in working with legacy code if you have to work with it?

Question

Programming

I will say in advance that I have been in development for a long time. Perhaps the question will seem like a sign of insufficient professionalism, but if there is a problem, it needs to be addressed. I noticed one peculiarity in myself: I work completely differently in 2 cases:

1. If I write a project from scratch, alone and on a familiar framework. In this case, it is very easy for me to enter the flow state, I can program for hours without a break. I feel like an artist painting from scratch, literally. I can work more than the standard 8 hours and not get tired. I can work outside of business hours. Roughly speaking - do not feed bread, let me create.

2. If I'm working on an old, big, wildly growing legacy project. Here the situation is exactly the opposite. When the working day begins, I delay the immediate start of work on the project as far as possible. I can start in the evening, tinker from half an hour to a maximum of 2-3 hours, no more. I work at a snail's pace, while at the same time I inflate the importance of my edits to the management as much as possible. Every problem that arises, where you need to figure out what and how it works in this project, wildly demotivates me. Procrastination and childish excuses are turned on to the maximum.

Something needs to be done with the 2nd case) How do you motivate yourself in this situation? How do you "artificially" develop interest in work where there is none?

Answer 1

Artificially developing interest will not work)
I usually work somehow like this:
1. I explain to myself that someone needs it, and my work on this legacy is beneficial.
2. Any project turns into legacy.
3. The very work on legacy is a challenge. You need to make a minimal change so as not to break anything, while the code should become better. This is something between the work of a sapper and a researcher.
4. If the previous three did not help, you need to dig deeper into yourself, what exactly you don’t like, or how you can motivate yourself - for example, with money.
If you don't enjoy working on legacy at all, that's fine. Just take it less, and more over non-legacy.
For example, I don't like working on an incorrigible legacy at all, when even a small task is digging into the code for several days. At the same time, the project is large, heavy, and based on old technologies.
It's hard to motivate me with money - that's why I try not to work on such code at all

Answer 2

How do you motivate yourself in this situation?