In my understanding, there are two reasons for aversion to hard work
The act of working hard is hard itself. (The obvious reason)
There are fears associated with working hard. These fears prevent us from pushing ourselves or starting work. (Elaborated in this post)
1. Fear of hard work not amounting to something.
Every feat has two components to it -- (i) things within our control and (ii) things outside our control. Things in our control are the time we invest, the effort we put in, our skills and qualities, and everything individual to us. Things outside our control (or having less control over) are the surrounding conditions, luck, other people etc.
Depending on the goal, the scale can be tilted towards (i) or (ii).
Hobbies are almost entirely in our control. There is little effect of (ii) in it. If you put enough effort, you can be sure of learning an instrument, a language, a sport, getting fitter etc.
A career, however, will require a good amount of (ii). Your growth and promotion can be hinged on how the company is performing, which in turn will be affected by the economic conditions of the country, government policy, etc., things you can’t control. The tilt between (i) and (ii) varies depending on the career. Entrepreneurship, for example, would be an extreme example where (ii) will play a much heavier role than conventionally safer careers.
In my opinion, finding a partner also requires a lot of (ii). There is a lot of uncertainty to it. Like how do you work hard to find a suitable partner? Okay, you can look better, style better, work on yourself, etc., but it still leaves many things to chance.
Things can turn out not good despite you working hard for them. And it is this fear that makes it scary sometimes even to start working hard.
2. Fear of others taking the reward.
This fear comes in relation to others. Seeing someone else ahead of us or working harder than us incites the feeling of “what is the point of working when the other person is going to get the reward and not me”. One may say that rewards aren’t all or nothing, but I believe that rewards can be all or nothing in some cases. Many goals are zero-sum -- fixed number of spots for admission, promotions etc.
3. Fear that hard work will get harder with time.
As we work hard and make progress, our abilities increase. In effect, we can take on bigger challenges in the future. However, we still worry whether we will be adept enough to take on the challenges that the future will throw at us.
The worry, therefore, is not that challenges will be harder for our current selves but that the challenges will be harder for our future selves too. Despite being more capable, we would fall short of the challenges.
The hard work required at any stage is the slope of the curve challenge vs. capability. Will the future look more like (b) than (a)?
4. Fear of success.
At first sight, fear of success might sound strange (also because I fear #1 is the opposite of this), but I believe many people, including me, have it. The thought of succeeding at something can be scary for many reasons. It can heighten your impostor syndrome.
It will bring me to the spotlight, which is uncomfortable. Others would be looking at me more closely. I’ll be subject to more scrutiny and criticism.
I won’t be able to sustain it. What if I was just lucky this time.
The expectations from me would be higher in the future. What if life goes downhill from here and the future is just full of failures.
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(Edit - Added thoughts on reducing these fears)
About the fear of others taking the rewards
We can be horrible judges of ourselves. The metrics we judge/evaluate others are skewed towards things we find ourselves lacking. There could be many factors involved in the final decision we are unaware of (or don’t consider important enough). Let’s not lose until we have actually lost.
There are rewards of a similar kind elsewhere. Alright, you worked hard for a promotion and didn’t get it, you worked on your startup, and it failed, you worked hard at improving yourself to impress someone but got rejected. It all feels like a waste. But the fact that you improved can get you another reward (a job at a different company, better knowledge of business for your next venture etc.).
About the fear that hard work will get harder with time
This you will only know in the future. Maybe challenges indeed get bigger with time. In that case, you will have the choice of whether to continue or do something else. You can’t decide this trade-off until you come to it.
About the fear of hard work not amounting to anything and the fear of success
Both of these fear is fear of the destination. What lies at the end of the road, be it failure or success, is preventing us from moving ahead. Overcoming these two fears will require a change in mindset -- to work hard as an end in itself, to enjoy seeing the progress without knowing what lies at the end of the road.
Having said that, I agree that these suggestions are easy to write but hard to apply ourselves. I’m still far away from overcoming these fears for myself.
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Credits - Nayan Deshmukh for feedback on posts ending abruptly