Why Working Smart is Better Than Working Hard

There are times when I sit down and reflect on this question - working hard or working smart. I have been a proponent of the first scenario and I can categorically say working hard has its pros and cons while working smart is the way of life of the successful men. When you work hard and break your back for a meager pay cheque you are drained at the end of the work week. But the reverse is the case when you work smart, you will have time to do other things. 

Traditionally, working hard is considered to be the cornerstone of achievement. You work hard at something, burn midnight oil, sweat and out run everyone else around you, to reach your goal. Maybe it's school, or grad school, or looking for a job. Maybe its learning a new skill, or improving an existing one for that manner.

It has been well known, said a hundred thousand times and drilled into our heads - "if you want to succeed, work hard". "You have to burn midnight oil". "Life is not easy; you have to work very hard to achieve something ". I completely am a fan of this thought, yet so many of us miserably fail at achieving our goal even after working so hard at it. We sometimes fall just short by inches, left to bite the dust. I have personally tasted this failure, even though I worked so hard at things. I just did not succeed. What was wrong? Was I not working hard? I was working very hard! So what was wrong! Oh no, was it about being smart? Being smart is about making smart choices. It’s about making the right decision, the right step or the right choice.

Smart people move up the ladder real fast. They also are the ones that have great cars, lot of money, and everything else the rest of us desire. Right? These are people that played smart and won big times. Seems so easy. But does that also mean they did not work hard to be where they are. Consider some very famous people, your idols, and your heroes. Did they just work smart and not hard? My honest opinion is they worked very hard. They worked so hard that we cannot even imagine what they went though.

People, who are successful in business life, work, or a profession typically go through hell before they can reap the rewards of success. Take the example of musicians, training for 8 to 12 hours a day is not uncommon among the top highly paid musicians in the world. Similarly performers, artists, professionals spend hundreds of hours honing their skills, without taking any shortcuts to perfect their art and to stay at the top. As you reach the pinnacle of success, you start making fewer mistakes. As you grow more experienced, you make fewer errors and these results in something that saves you lots of time, effort and energy. You have now become smart. You now make smart choices.

You now play smart! Working hard or working smart cannot be separated from each other. Even when working hard you have to make smart choices. You cannot just wake up one day and say to yourself, "Today I will make smart choices". No, you should be saying that to yourself every day and work "hard" on it. Give anything your best shot and work towards your goals like there is no tomorrow.

Be strong willed and work hard to get what you want, because the desire to achieve something is only as strong as the smallest distraction that can take you away from it. Be smart about setting your goals and planning how to achieve your goal. Be smart about making choices in life and then work on making those choices spring you good things. Work hard in making smart choice and work even harder to learn how to make smart choices. Make mistakes but be smart enough to learn from them. Try to be smart in making your choices in life and work hard towards fulfilling your dreams

There is a common misconception in the world, especially among younger people, that you have to work hard and pay your dues, even if it means being miserable.  For some reason people seem to think that they have to be miserable for the first few years of their work life in order to get to where they want to be; either professionally or personally.  Lots of younger people have this notion that if they work hard that everything will be okay and fall into place for them.  This is the wrong way to go about trying to succeed.  There is a fine line between working hard and working smart. I used to think this way and the first few jobs I had out of college were horrible.  Everyone used to tell me, “well kid, you have to pay your dues,” to which I would reply, “why?” and the response I always got back was, “you just have to.”  This is the most illogical, useless, counter intuitive and counter productive type of thinking that boxes you in and makes you feel like you are worth nothing.

People who work hard and people who work smart have different measures of success. Those that work hard usually evaluate success based on inputs such as the number of hours they work and the number of tasks they accomplish in a day or in a week and ultimately seek a large paycheck. Typically hard work means something like 60 or 70 hours a week (sometimes 80 or 90), working at home in the evenings and weekends, and continuously juggling multiple projects in a frantic attempt to get them all done. This is not hard work; this is simply poor management of your time and a clear lack of understanding of your strengths and skills.  Not to mention the inability to balance your work life and your personal life.  I don’t have anything against people that work hard and slave away day to day, it’s just not the type of person I want to be.  There are many successful people in the world who call themselves hard workers, and that they are.

Those that work smart usually evaluate success based on the amount of discretionary time they have to do whatever it is they want to do. Smart workers don’t focus on inputs they focus on prioritizing in order to achieve the most valuable outputs in the most efficient ways. Smart workers usually have a much better work-life balance, are entrepreneurs, are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and manage time effectively.  For example, a smart worker will realize that they are more productive during a certain time of day and will batch their tasks based on difficulty to match with when they are most productive.  A hard worker has a long list and just checks off tasks one a time as he goes down the list. There isn’t a better or worse way to get things done it’s based on preference.  Personally I’m not capable of bulldozing through a long list of tasks, working ridiculous hours, and sacrificing my life for a paycheck, it’s just not me.  I don’t really admire people that make a ton of money and work ridiculous hours (if I want to make a ton of money I can just get two full time jobs and sleep 3 hours a day), I admire people that are successful yet still have discretionary time and a solid work life balance. I think there are a few key things that can help people work smart (if they so desire) Understand your strengths and weaknesses and try to take on projects that match your strengths while delegating or outsourcing projects or tasks that fall within your “weaknesses” category.

Don’t focus on completing a lot of tasks; focus on completing the most important tasks that will have the greatest impact on whatever it is you are doing.  Prioritize and manage your time effectively, this means understanding when you are most productive, what tasks take you the longest time to complete, etc.  Batch the hardest most tedious tasks with the times you are most productive. Check email only twice a day (and is possible once a day).  I do this at 11am PST and 4pm PST.

I batch my email time and when I’m not checking email I’m actually working on getting things done that need to get done.  The trouble with email is that when you send an email you get one right back and email then becomes this glorified chat messaging program (which it isn’t).  I let people get ahold of me on skype if they really need me but email is only at 11 and 4. Don’t waste emotional currency in return for financial currency.  What I mean here is don’t work at a job that makes you feel miserable just because they are paying you well.  Now, you can’t just up and leave a job that is responsible for your financial security so the smart thing to do here is to start saving and aggressively looking for another job that you can transition to.  Pick up some small side projects on Craigslist (or wherever) just to supplement your income.  When you have enough money to cover your expenses from side projects (or saved up cash), then you can quit. Education is your best friend.  Working smart is all about understanding the big picture.  You need to constantly learn and evolve your skill set so as to make work easy and you become sellable within a short period of time.