It made sense in the past. But, it's not actually focused on productivity, it focuses specifically on suffering and the effort. When productivity is possible without strenuous effort, something which wasn't very common in the past (it was possible in things like art, which was consequently never valued as highly as dogged physical labor), it is viewed with suspicion and derision. Society is structured around placing high value on sacrifice and suffering as a consequence of the Protestant Work Ethic in the west. Productivity is beside the point. I believe this is one of the main reasons why the introduction of computers has resulted in skyrocketing productivity paired with frozen wages, and it will get worse. As everything was built around the idea of rewarding physical exhaustion, discomfort, strenuous effort, etc, when the majority of work is mental work which has no real outward signs of strain, it won't be rewarded. As a result, longer and longer hours will be expected, wages will not rise, and any cries for understanding by workers will be met with derision by the public at large. "It's not like you're working hard."

Working hard is valued, and should be pursued for its own value. Asking for compensation is crass and devalues your effort. Being productive without suffering or straining is not valued. It is seen as "cheating" and whatever is produced is seen as inherently less valuable. These are problematic perspectives that are causing us social problems and will continue to do so until there is a social re-evaluation of things. Until then... burnout for everybody!

>Working hard is a shared value across all religious and ethnic backgrounds.

You'd be surprised.

And let's not even go into the ancient Greeks, and Romans, where "working hard" was for the lesser classes (not necessarily slaves), and it was not considered a great virtue. As Nietchze noted, nobility and honor were attached solely to "otium and bellum" (leisure and war).

It's not exclusive to protestantism, ofcourse. But they're special in that it's an explicit way to please god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

It is, however, not a value shared across time in those religious and ethnic backgrounds, and anthropology shows this. Religion tends to incorporate ideology, not just produce it. It is entirely reasonable to say that there is a "capitalist work ethic" that finds its fruition in societies with generalized commodity production. The same work ethic was not found in many more isolated countries, or those countries which resisted capital. It was not nearly as strong (and had different motivations) in feudal and slave modes of production.

It is absolutely not some kind of eternal human nature common to us all to value hard work, and it is not even an emergent phenomenon in many cultures - until, as I said, they come under the sway of capital.

Without work there is no play.