Hard work in itself isn't necessarily valuable. Smart work is.
It's vital to learn early on that you have to put in the work if you want to achieve anything at all. Merely being gifted or naturally good at something certainly is not enough.
However, I'd say it's just as important to understand the purpose behind any kind of work and to be able to question how things are usually done.
Achieving the same or better results with less work is what will set you apart.
I challenge the distinction between hard work and smart work. You cannot be smart without hard work. Amassing knowledge and mental ability requires years of effort and work. It is easier for gifted/clever people, but not inherent.
I'd read that as 'pick your battles well'. You can work hard at things and get nowhere, you can work hard at other things and make a ton of progress, and these things can sometimes be estimated beforehand.
You can keep churning out spaghetti code (hopefully the uncooked kind) or you can learn and apply better methods, for example.
When people are too much hung on hard work, they do stupid innefective things. Like, studying that much that you sleep deprive yourself, long crunch in work, sleeping under table in work as proof of commitment etc. Training so much that you get injury from it.
Are you sure? Doesn't work have value under any scenario, if only a residual educational value: a lesson for you and/or others? That would reduce "hard" and/or "smart" to multipliers of that value.
It's vital to learn early on that you have to put in the work if you want to achieve anything at all. Merely being gifted or naturally good at something certainly is not enough.
However, I'd say it's just as important to understand the purpose behind any kind of work and to be able to question how things are usually done.
Achieving the same or better results with less work is what will set you apart.