Smarter Alternative To Hard Work

While growing up, we were taught that hard work is among the very vital necessities to achieve success. However, when I grew up, I realized that, even though hard work is good, there is still something called "smart work" which is even better. For everything that you want to do, it is worthy to note that there will always be an easier way to get it done. After all, what is rewarded is not the hardness of the process to acquire the results but the results themselves. So you need to focus on the result and then look for better ways to achieve it.

_{Image from Pexels}

A lot of people focus more on processes and how hard they have expended their energy, thinking that it is "how hard" that determines success, but they forget that it is "how well." If something takes someone days to get done and you figure out a way to get it done in hours, you would have saved time and energy. Take for instance: if you are to prepare a document with the manual typewriter, it will take you a long time to do that. But the same document, if you use a computer system to type, edit, format, and print it, you will achieve the same result; even better; in a shorter time. With the advent of technology, a lot of things have been simplified.

I remember when I was much younger, in my primary school times, when we normally go on vacation to the village. We used to help our Grandpa with some farm work. Any day we went to farm, we would spend basically the entire day on the farm with very little result to show for it. In fact, it was very labour-intensive, yet with very little output. Fast-forward to many years later, the same piece of farm land, by using farm machines, would require just a few hours of input with minimal efforts, and would produce better results. We found a way to make the work smarter instead of harder and we achieved better results.

In this world that is already fast-paced and full of competition, no one is interested in how much labour you have put into something. They are not also concerned about how hard you have tried. What they want to see is the result that you have been able to get with the work you have done. If you put in extensive work and you do not get any result to prove, but someone else puts smarter work and secures a better result, they will be rewarded more than you. You have to understand that efforts, labour, hard work, etc, are not what will be rewarded at the end but the results. If you have this in mind, you will not waste your time on irrelevances.

_{Image from Pexels}

In a racing competition for example, the prize is given to the athlete who gets to the finishing line before every other person. It does not matter hard the other competitors are able to flap their hands while running, what matters is when each competitor arrives the line. In the same in life, the hardness of the work that you do is not what guarantees success, but the way and the manner you do it with "smartness" in practice. Simplicity has arrived in life with the introduction and proliferation of technology - so you need to leverage on it to make your work easier. Before now, to get an information, you may need to flip through heaps of books in a library. But now, in minutes, you can get the same result by using the Internet. This is part of what working smart entails.

Each time you have a task to undertake, or a goal to achieve, always draw out the plan and put into consideration the processes and the procedures involved, then ask yourself if there are better ways to get it done. Sometimes, that a task looks difficult may just be because of the way you approach it. If you discover better ways to undertake the task, you will be surprised how easy it will be to achieve your goal. In life, you have to understand something, as I conclude with it; it is not always "how hard" or "how far," but it is based on "how well."

Thanks for reading