The issue here is that there are many activities required for game progression which have no gameplay value after the first few hours. There is no challenge or interest involved beyond that point, you are simply doing the same activity over and over for some sort of progression that is time-gated to require dozens or even hundreds of hours.
I can understand what you are saying, but I tend to mitigate this by trying to never do a single activity for longer than a hour at the most. Sure there are times when that isn't possible, like yesterday when I decided to take my new Krait for a spin of about 300lys to unlock a specific Engineer. I knew it was going to be boring, kind of self inflicted because I like doing a full DSS scan on any systems I encounter that are marked as Unknown to me. I broke that up into short 30 minute jaunts and had a break in between each run. Took me longer than some, but I ended up with a healthy payment from the Cartography department, a boost to my overall Explorer status and a new found respect for those that like heading out to the black.
Carrying data between stations over and over again just to grind your Naval rank or local rep is mindless and has no gameplay value. You aren't even minimally engaged in the process like you are with trading where you follow buy/sell prices, cargo capacity and jump ranges and are trying to optimize your route. Doing those courier data missions over and over again has no actual gameplay value and is simply designed to grind activities over and over for rank progression.
I only did this once, took my Courier which I enjoy flying, stacked the missions as one does, and had some fun doing it. Got to the required rank, then did some more because I was actually enjoying getting interdicted by larger ships in my little speedster. Had this wonderful little image of an irate NPC Anaconda pilot shaking his fist at me every time I beat his interdiction

The rest of the time, I have not worried about rank, it just comes naturally as I do missions and the like. This could be because I am not focused on getting some uber ship to show my manhood err skill. Yep I will never own one of the big four
Driving the SRV on planets looking for very rare mats has no actual gameplay value after the first few hours, especially given that the wave scanner isn't particularly reliable (due to various bugs) and the SRV's engine sound drowns out the wave scanner which is an absurd situation since the vehicle uses an electric engine on an airless planet. Spending an hour driving on a planet to find maybe one or two metallic meteorites isn't gameplay content and simply involves driving around long enough to trigger the RNG spawns.
Now this one I do disagree with. For starters you must be landing in the wrong areas or not looking at the specs of the planet first. I find I am locating rocks to shoot about every five to ten minutes max, normally quicker than that. As for the wave scanner, now that I understand it, never had a problem with it, it guides me to where I need to go just about every time. I actually admit I enjoy hooning around the surface in my little moon buggy, I find it very relaxing. But as I said before, I set myself limits as well. For this type of activity, it is when one of the three self imposed criteria are met: 1 hour, I max out in at least 3 grade one mats or find a set quantity of the mat I am after. There is a fourth, but that again is a personal thing - if I find enough containers to fill my ship I leave when it is full, simple as that.
Even the recent Guardian ruin sites are still based on boring grindy gameplay. They have maybe 2 hours of actual gameplay content but require 12 hours to unlock all of the Guardian weapons and modules. There is nothing "enjoyable" about scanning hundreds of obelisks to get Epison data that has maybe 1 in 100 drop rate. It is just grind.
I will have to submit to you on this one, once I read about what is required, I decided I didn't need to do it. But now I am thinking it might be nice to have that Guardian FSD booster so I will attempt it, but just the once to get that, I have no interest in anything else.
If you don't do those activities you are not getting any of the rank-locked ships, Engineering mats or Guardian mats that you need for those unlocks. You really can't progress in the game without doing the various grinds, if you want to make any progress in the game you don't have any other options because the game is designed around grind.
That is assuming you have to have the rank locked ships, that module Engineers to the max, or those special weapons or modules. You can progress the game without them, no where is it specified you have to have them, there is no penalty if you don't have them - except if you PvP and that is solely a personal choice isn't it.
Remember I am not saying there isn't grind, it is how you address the grind that is the issue. For some it grates on them, like running a rasp over there neither regions. For others, it is something to think about and come up with ways to make it less grindy or even enjoyable.