It seems that ever since the spinning jenny, which saved young women from labouring at the wheel, perhaps pricking their fingers and ending up talking to the mirror on the wall, progress has been directed solely towards reducing the amount of effort expended by humanity.

After the spinning jenny came assembly line machinery, then computers, then robots, all of which succeeded in abolishing millions of repetitive and unpleasant jobs.

The elevator, without which there would have been no sky scrapers, can also take us to the first floor after a heavy lunch. Thanks to the internal combustion engine, we need no longer walk to the letter box. Improvements in car design long ago removed the need to crank up an engine or stick a hand out to show which way we're going, and today it is only drivers of old bangers who have to bother with turning handles to wind windows up and down or open doors.
Machines wash our dishes and clothes, and inventors are hard at work on a robot that will push the vacuum cleaner for us. Who whisks egg with a fork these days or stirs dough with a wooden spoon? We have neat electrical kitchen gadgets to do all that sort of thing.
Nobody has to sing at the piano or play charades any more, thanks to the TV and CD player. The remote control ensures that we need, literally, only lift a finger to see what's on the other side. And the push button phone has freed us from the exhausting business of turning a dial, sometimes all the way round from 0.