And some people do make that claim. They just usually don't have much to show for their efforts, by comparison to the people making the other claim.

There seem to me to be successful people who claim that they have had to work hard and overcome obstacles to achieve their success. Thomas Edison's famous "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." springs to mind but successful people who claim that 'damn hard work' was what brought them success don't seem as rare as you imply here.

I think perhaps you are reading "love" as something like "receive pleasure by", whereas the intended meaning is more like "create pleasure through".

You seem to be saying that people who 'love their work' then do not literally enjoy the process of doing their work but take pleasure in the results. This sounds quite plausible but then I wonder why this is in conflict with the idea that 'Work is hard and problematic and we must be forced to do it.'?

It all seems to come back to the question of how you motivate yourself to do things (or just to start things) that are not intrinsically pleasurable in the moment or intrinsically rewarding.

For example, I do not find it easy to drag myself out of bed at 5am to head out into the wet and cold and take a 2 hour bus ride to go snowboarding but I find it easier to perform this somewhat unpleasant task when motivated by the relatively short term reward of an enjoyable day on the mountain. I find it harder to motivate myself to overcome obstacles at work and avoid procrastination because the reward is distant, abstract and only loosely correlated with my direct actions (and the sub-tasks often feel intrinsically more effortful).

I'm curious if you have insight into how one could go about making distant, abstract and loosely correlated outcomes have the same motivational force as shorter term, more direct actions leading to actually-enjoyed outcomes.