I'm telling you for me being a better more productive engineer had a lot to do with making better choices. I'm not selling you a book or inviting you to my TED Talk.

Not wasting a tremendous amount of time automating something is indeed an important skill to learn (because automating things is way more fun for some people than actually doing the thing).

Coaching junior employees to neither ask me for help the instant they're confused nor spin their wheels for two weeks without asking for help is a COMMON thread.

>High achievers, across the board, consistently demonstrate putting more effort in.

Growing up, in school, I did almost nothing and was consistently at the top of my class until I got older and things started requiring effort for me. The early years of high achievement had literally nothing to do with effort.

These days being a high achiever has a lot to do with managing the perception of your work.

> Companies will smartly balance the amount of work allocated to people.

Tell me you never worked in a workplace or was completely oblivious about workload of various people, without telling me.

Also, in my experience, people who consistently spend a lot of time in work tend to be very ineffective with their time. They are in the "overwork yourself, be ineffective, try to compensate by working more, be tired make more mistake, try to compensate" cycle.