IMHO hard work looks different for everyone, and a project that might be hard for one person may be easy for someone else, even if the people were equally intelligent.
I worked through Smart But Scattered a few weeks ago, and my DD has a weakness in Planning and Prioritization (among other things). The book talks about breaking a project down into manageable chunks - ones that feel like a 3 on an effort scale of 1-10. A 3 approximates "I feel confident I can do it, but it won't be easy."
A 1 is defined as "takes virtually no effort at all." The book defines 10 as "the child can do it, but it feels very very hard" - DD defined a 10 as "an insurmountable task I have no hope of accomplishing." She (at age 8) felt that she needed some way of expressing that the task was more than "very very hard" - that she felt she literally could not successfully accomplish the task as presented.
We actually left some items on her list with ratings of 5 or 6, rather than trying to get them all broken down into 3s, with the understanding that when she got to that task, if it still felt like a higher-than-3, I'd help her break it down into a 3-or-lower. At least one of those tasks she's already completed without any assistance.
