I guess I tend to see things as good, bad, or neutral and a lot of the "bare minimum" things fall into that neutral category. It's not good or bad, it's just what you're supposed to do, kind of like going to work. It's not worthy of praise that I went to work. I need money to live, they need labor, so I go to work and they pay me. It's not good or bad. Sure there are ethics involved the deeper you go like "it's bad to call out sick when you're not sick" so going to work is "good" if juxtaposed to that, but I think you could spend an eternity breaking things down more and more like that lol

Worthy of praise would be more "difficult," to keep with the work thing just doing my job isn't worthy of praise, but accomplishing something "more," maybe solving a problem or fixing something that's not the standard for your job would be worthy of praise.