The more I live, the more I realize that this statement isn't about moralizing and is about a fundamental truth about our psychology.
However, in my senior year of high school, I ended up putting in much more time and dedication to track (as well as joining the cross country team, making it an all year commitment), so I spent an average of ~22ish hour/wk doing workouts related to that over the course of the year. I expected the little time I spent on school to drop to zero, however I was surprised that I was actually much more motivated to work on my relatively easy/unstimulating schoolwork. After working hard at running before and after school, it just felt unnatural to not work hard at schoolwork.
However, I can't help but feel that a lot of Abrahamic teachings seem to be mostly about increasing the mimetic fitness of the faith. For instance: "go forth and multiply" is always good for keeping the size of your congregation up; evangelism likewise; "you shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk" reads to me as "don't eat your future dairy animals", a handy survival tip in the bronze age; and so forth.