It may have been the case before that people thought hard work brought a better life, but now things have changed
Professor Bobby Duffy worked on the study, and said that millennials have ‘become much more sceptical about prioritising work as they’ve made their way through their career’.
That matches my experience. I was in school when i learned that doing homework faster (we had a week to do it and i had it done in a day) doesn’t get you an advantage, it just means that the teacher decides that we can handle more homework.
There are now studies (I/you need to look up the references since I’m now in a hurry) which posit that, especially in bigger organisations, 80% of the work gets done by 20% of non-managing individuals - because of exactly this phenomenon.