In today’s fast pace world. Output is what matters. Every human invention has been created to enhance our capability to produce outcome in the most efficient way possible. We try to produce maximum output with minimum input of time and energy.
The mantra to achieve success is what?
Contrary to traditional belief it’s handwork but contrary to modern belief its smart work.What is the difference between these two?
Hard work means putting more physical effort than mental effort.
Advantages of Hard work:
- Through hard work, we gain knowledge and experience. This will help us to do work smartly in future.
- Hard work teaches us patience and discipline.
- We feel self-satisfied after we get our desired outcome.
Disadvantages of Hard work:
- Hard work is boring and monotonous, at times.
- It consumes a lot of time and effort.
- Hard work doesn’t allow us to fully use our brain and as a result, we put more physical efforts.
- It isn’t an efficient method, generally.
- Working hard is not enough to achieve our goals.
Smart work means putting efforts efficiently to get results.
Advantages of Smart work:
- Smart work improves our innovative and creative thinking skills.
- Smart work enhances our productivity.
- It teaches time management skills.
- Smart work demands complete mental presence and hence improves our concentration power.
- Smart work is really the need of the hour.
- Smart work makes us more organized and systematic.
Disadvantages of Smart work:
- Smart work may makes us lazy, as we get used to do less work and get more output.
- Mere smart work may not yield results. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”. Hence, we cannot completely rely on smart work.
- To work smartly, at first, we need knowledge about the work, which comes only with hard work and experience.
I would like to add that working smart isn’t everyone’s cup of tea surely.
Being smart isn’t easy.
Being smart takes a lot of effort. People need to read more, continuously keep learning new stuff, try to benefit from others’ experiences, sharpen their thinking skills by being able to predict the outcomes before mindlessly putting any effort in any direction, and being able to manipulate the given resources to suit their requirements.
We say work smart, but the important question is how to work smart?
Those who use their smartness to avoid their work to run away from hardships are actually lazy. And this often backfires in long run.
You cannot outrun the fact that,
Talent and skill set are the pre-requisites for smart work.
Now what if you are not talented enough. How can you do smart work?
By handwork.
You work hard to become smart.
Hence, handwork is essential for smart work.
One important conclusion we derive from this is:
Hard work and smart work aren’t two contradictory terms rather smart work is a subset of hard work.
If you want to become smart, you must emphasize the things written below:
1.DEVELOP CREATIVITY
The future belongs to the creative people. If you want to create value in the creative society, your brain muscle must be as strong as possible. Smart workers read, develop street smart skills and make sure they become extremely resourceful. They invest massively into developing useful and practical knowledge.
2.ACQUIRE TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS
Smart workers know that time is the most prized resource they have. They value their time the most in life. Thus, smart workers learn how to manage their time wisely.
3.UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEM
Everything is some kind of a system. Education, healthcare, politics, finance, etc. To make better decisions, you can analyze almost everything in life as a system. The better you understand the system, the smarter you can work, because you can make better decisions.
4.BEING CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT
Smart workers have a very clear picture of what they want. Because they know what they want, they build their strategy much more easily and make better choices in the process. They work hard for it in a smart way. They have a strategy. Hard workers have a vague idea of what they want and hence don’t take the best decisions or they simply believe that solely their hard work will pay off.
5.BEING OPTIMISTIC
Always have a positive outlook on life, no matter how hard things are. We can’t live a positive life with a negative mind, so you can’t work smart with negative thinking.
When we’re experiencing negative emotions, our creative and thinking horizon contracts. We focus all our constructive energy on negative emotions. As a result, we fail to see prospective opportunities . When we have a negative outlook on life, we simply start lagging behind.
6.CAREFULLY SELECTING THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITIES
We can drown in opportunities. Therefore, smart workers very carefully select the opportunities they engage with. They have no problem saying no. They’re patient and wait for the one right thing with low risk and massive potential return.
Our energy and resources are very limited, thus as a smart worker, we have to choose our battles very carefully. If we say yes to everything, we will burn out sooner or later. A burnt-out worker is not a smart worker.
7.THINKING AND RESEARCHING BEFORE ACTING
Hard workers just do work, because they were told to do something or because they need to escape the hard facts of life or they feel more important when working or whatever other emotional reason there is. Smart workers always think before they act – for every single activity they analyze: “Why am I doing this, how much of my resources will it take, what will be the rewards, what is the optimal way to do the job, which tools can help speed up the process,”.Smart workers are aware that every hour of planning can save many hours in execution.
HENCE, FOR ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS YOU HAVE TO WORK HARD AS WELL AS SMART.