Can you provide sources for “peasants used to work much less than us” story?

And peasants is quite a broad term and in order to make it sound more reliable, you have to provide source. Also I'm really interested in this, as I keep seeing this on this subreddit frequently. Please guys provide sources/information about this I tried to tell this story to my friend and he was asking me where did I get that? Who said it's true.. so.. yea I had nothing to tell him