A transparent example is in science. Many scientists routinely spit out grunt-work publications, and they might get their name out there due to their sheer quantity of work, but it takes someone willing to work on a hard problem to get a nobel prize (or in some cases, it takes right-experiment-at-the-right-time type of luck).
You'd be surprised at how many scientists avoid the obviously challenging problems just to work out smaller details. There's an inherent fear of failing in science, especially for tenure track professors, because so much rides on the quantity, not quality, of results. Throughout history, however, the scientists whose names we know today are precisely those brave enough to tackle the hard problems.
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