I actually think this (changing hard work into difficult problems) can be a danger on the individual level: a dislike of "mere" hard work means that we often se

I actually think this (changing hard work into difficult problems) can be a danger on the individual level: a dislike of "mere" hard work means that we often seek to transform it into an "interesting" difficult problem. The classic example here is spending a day automating a task that only takes a few minutes of boring low-level maintenance a week.