> “Societal success” in this sense is relative to others’ performance
That's only true because we failed to offer something better. Societal success should mean: "economic security and independence, and the pursuit of happiness", where happiness is defined as one's wellbeing. And that shouldn't require hard work.
If it was the case, than people could choose to work as hard or as easy as they want to achieve anything grandiose and ambitious, but they wouldn't have too, they'd be free to choose too or not.
At least it is my opinion that a society should try to eliminate the need for physical and mental exertion from its citizens, while providing them with their needs met, and thus setting them free to do as they please. What they please to do could be to work on extra hard problems, or to put hard work 24/7 on some goal, even if it's a stupid one, like a world record at cherry pit spitting.
The way it is now, "societal success" comes from being an outlier in being able to have this freedom to choose to continue to work hard or not. People basically aspire to achieve societal success by performing better then others financially and getting themselves into a position of inequality where they hold the big end of the stick. And the messaging is that to achieve this privileged position, you need to put in "hard work". And I feel this is the wrong outcome of society.