How to Succeed by Working Smarter

Lately, we have all listened to people emphasising a new idea that's been going round - that hard work has been swapped for smart work. The notion has begun creeping into every venture, including the business world. After all, "smart" businesses often seem to do very well, while the "hard working" ones usually have difficulty. However, this certainly isn't a new fad or thought up tactic to get customers; it has really become a requirement for business survival. The concept of working smarter has - in all probability, developed to deal with the increasing gap between our constantly increasing desires and our constantly decreasing personal time.
These two opposing forces require an optimum usage of our individual resources - be it our time or money. Hard work calls for "doing things rightly", whereas smart work is all about "doing right things". The fundamental philosophy for these two methods may appear - on the surface, to be just a changing around of letters and words, but the drastic consequences coming from adhering to one or the other might be completely different. This is an obvious and undeniable movement from being 'efficient' to 'effective'.
At this point, the differentiation between these two methods gets fuzzy, because while our hard working people may go out of the way to aquire resources or raise the number of units being built for the improvement of operations, smart working people are all about efficiently managing energy, commitments, people and the physical environment in such a way so as to use them in the most profitable way possible, thereby accomplishing maximum output for input.
As is clearly seen from the obvious benefits of "smart working", a person is much more likely to succeed by adhering to this approach than by following the "hard working" methodology. However, the crux of this is that quite a bit of hard work builds the foundation for smart work. In other words, if you work smartly, it doesn't mean that you can sit back and relax, expecting wonders to occur to your organization on their own - it requires very hard work. Whether working "Hard" or "Smart", every workload in each instance can be managed by a proper delegation of tasks, and small initiatives can go a long way toward saving time in each methodology. So, we must conclude that it's a mix of these two methods that most correctly serves our intended goal - successful enterprising!


By : Alan Gillies