It's not this simple. A lot of people revel in suffering because they have a faulty mindset that good things can only come from bad things. Meaning, success comes with blood, sweat, and tears.

This is not true, generally. There is such a thing as free lunch. Not everything must be a battle, and not every battle has a winner.

Some people lean into work because they believe that by sacrificing they will discover the key to happiness. So they sacrifice things that feel good, like spending time laughing with friends or maybe delicious food. In short, they shrink their lives, purposefully removing the good parts. Some go so far as to remove good parts for absolutely no gain. Maybe they're gluten-free, but they're not gluten intolerant. Some are even purposefully lonely in some extreme sacrifice of human nature. Almost like monks or cardinals - they believe if they sacrifice something so fundamental, like sex or love, that they will achieve something other's cannot.

The truth is a lot of that sacrifice will be for nothing. Sometimes the right choice is doing something stupid, or doing something unproductive.

That is a very deep truth that you're stating, and also very hard for many people to learn. I've tried asking these kind of people if they believe that Martin Luther or Vladimir Lenin is going to reward them after death for their faithfulness, but the thing most closely to an explanation that I've gotten is that they can throw it into the faces of the townspeople that they worked hard while the others didn't.