I think we've conflated hard work with results. Hard work is a symptom that we're doing something incorrectly. Either it's too challenging for us, or we're doing it the wrong way.

There seems to be too much value on hard work, and not enough on efficient progress, breaking things down into challenges that we're capable of achieving.

Hard work is never accomplished, it's only once we break them down into achievable tasks that we're ever able to tackle something initially deemed as hard.