Why You Don’t Know How to Work Hard or Work Smart

Once upon a time there was a tiny village.

It was a wonderful place to live – except for one problem. This village had no water unless it rained. The villagers needed water so they asked Bob and John, two of their own, to solve the problem.

Bob immediately grabbed some buckets.

He ran to the lake, filled his buckets and started carrying back water. When he returned to the village, he emptied his buckets in the village reservoir and ran back to the lake.

He worked hard, doing this day after day.

John did absolutely nothing

At least, that’s what the other villagers thought. He didn’t have any buckets and no one ever saw him carrying water. In fact, most of the villagers assumed he had given up.

But John was working too.

He’d spent the vast majority of his time planning and preparing. While Bob hauled buckets back and forth, John was planning a pipeline to bring water to the village.

I’ll bet you know how this story ends.

John built a system.

He used a few simple ingredients to create a better product. He created his pipeline and eventually, Bob was out of business.

Bob worked hard.

John worked hard and he worked smart.

Hard work is for suckers

People tend to divide themselves into two camps. The hard workers focus on their work ethic and the extreme effort they put into their projects. They’re often viewed as suckers, the pack mules who clean up after everyone else.

Smart workers call it “delegating.” They’re focused on finding the best way to deal with a problem whether that’s over, under, around or through. That’s the problem though. Working smart tends to fizzle out on its own.

So, which one is better, working hard or working smart?

Neither.

As you’re probably aware, you need them both. Working hard and working smart, they’re best used together.

At certain times, you really only need to work hard or work smart.

That’s the rationale anyway.

Maybe there’s a project that requires hard work to push through. So, you work hard and fast on finishing your reports, doing what you can to get the work done. To get things finished and completed on time.

Still requires smarts.

Okay, what about the times where you’re only required to use smarts?

Times when you’re brainstorming ideas for a marketing campaign or deciding on the strategy and tactics you’ll use for said campaign?

You’re working hard.

See the problem? Working hard and working smart – they’re hopelessly intertwined. It isn’t necessarily about choosing between working hard or working smart. It’s all about balance.

Trouble comes when we’re imbalanced

Most of us need to work hard and smart but that rarely works out. The nature of these two methods seem to be in constant conflict. But, as you’ll see, they complement each other perfectly – but only when they’re balanced.

This is the ideal outcome most of us want. Most of us want to maintain a balance between working hard and working smart.

But why?

Is it really that beneficial to work this way?

Actually, it is.

And it all starts with the differences between the two.

1. Smart work Shows us where to direct our attention and how to direct it. Smarts acts as a manager enabling us to focus our time and attention on the things that matter.
2. Hard work Gives us the ability to implement and act. Once we know what we need to focus our attention on, hard work gets us there, giving us the momentum we need to push through failure, discouragement and setbacks.

This would be easy to handle if everything stayed the same.

But it doesn’t.

You know that. The one consistent part of work, and of life really, is change. Most of the world works hard and smart to be better, to have better.

Like it or not, our work is in a constant state of flux.

Flux leads to imbalance when it’s ignored

Which people and companies are prone to do. When we hear the stories we shake our heads. What were they thinking? The signs were all there. How could they have ignored them?

It’s a constant struggle for most of us.

Because we don’t understand the nature of flux. It’s inevitable, purposeful and typically driven by people.

• Steve Sasson invented the digital camera in 1975. Then his bosses made him hide it. This invention would have saved their company but they ignored flux and embraced denial, changing the company’s efforts from working hard and smart to simply working hard. You know them as Kodak, the very same company that filed bankruptcy in 2012.
• 119 fatalities, 500 injuries, 3,500 tire complaints and a public fight with the Ford Motor Co. forced Firestone to recall 6.5 million tires. Their tires were killing customers. Firestone, wanting to minimize bad publicity, focused on keeping things quiet and shifting the blame. The Ford Motor co. was having none of it, deciding to replace an additional 13 million Firestone tires on their Ford Explorers. Their decision to evade and avoid meant they were no longer working hard or smart.
• Parc created something revolutionary. A GUI based personal computer that allowed users to move their cursor across the screen with a mouse. Today this sounds mundane, but in the 1980s this idea was revolutionary. PARC launched their slow and underpowered personal computer in 1981. It didn’t go well. Xerox, their parent company, ran from the hard work of learning from their mistake. They pulled out of the personal computer market completely. Steve Jobs and the Apple team took PARC’s original idea and improved on it, eventually creating the Mac.

Xerox ran from hard work, Kodak rejected smart work and Firestone rejected both altogether.

History is filled with stories like these. People, teams, companies all making the same mistakes. Rejecting flux and creating imbalance, as we’ve seen, leads to disaster.

What’s so great about balance?

Somewhere along the line we’ve swallowed a lie. A false dichotomy that teaches us to work backwards. That’s the sad part about working hard and working smart.

They’re balanced by default.

Working hard, working smart, they’re already intertwined. All we have to do is go with the flow, to accept what is and do what’s best.

For ourselves.
For those around us.
For our projects.
For the future we want to realize.

Accepting what is maintains the balance and harmony we need to flow. It’s the ideal scenario most of us crave.

But it’s impossible.

If we avoid the dysfunctions, roadblocks and barriers waiting for us, working hard and smart is impossible.

Imbalance becomes inevitable.

Sounds ridiculous until we realize we stop working hard and smart when…

• We lose autonomy. Micro managers, dictators and controllers whittle away the smarts their team needs to make a project successful. When they’re busy controlling those around them they don’t see the truth. Compliance simply becomes hard work when we lose the hearts and minds of those we work with.
• Circumstances are hard. Smart work is often abandoned in the face of resistance, difficulty, struggle and stress. Do we follow our training when things get hard? No. We revert to our bad habits.
• Our motives are impure. When our ego and selfishness takes the wheel we stop working smart. It’s impossible to work smart when we’re working so hard to protect our ego, interests and desires.
• We hide from the truth. The truth can be painful. Sometimes it’s more than we can handle. So we hide from it. We avoid looking at the reports showing our project is failing, we keep doing the same things – especially when it stops working. We don’t want to know why. We’re working hard, but our willful ignorance keeps us from working smart.

Our moment-to-moment choices determine whether we’re working hard and smart. When we accept reality, accept what is, it’s easy to work hard and smart. Poor choices create imbalance taking away our ability to stay in the zone.

You don’t know how to work hard and smart…

If you’re like most people that is. Most people live their lives on autopilot. They follow conventional wisdom, they simply do as they’re told.

Which isn’t hard or smart.

That’s a pretty bold statement to make. Is there any evidence to support a claim like that?

As a matter of fact there is.

According to a Gallup poll examining employee engagement, only 31.5 percent of U.S. employees were engaged in 2014 and 32 percent in 2015. Gallup daily lists ‘engaged at work at 29.3 percent.

It’s stagnant.

The vast majority of people are unfulfilled at work. Some work hard. Some work smart, but the people who excel at both are in the minority.

This seems like a stretch until you look at the behaviors of the disengaged.

“These people aren’t hostile or disruptive. They show up and kill time, doing the minimum required with little extra effort to go out of their way for customers. They are less vigilant, more likely to miss work and change jobs when new opportunities arise. They are thinking about lunch or their next break. Not engaged employees are either “checked out” or attempting to get their job done with little or no management support.”

It’s an epidemic. Most people aren’t working hard or smart.

Okay.

So how do you do it?

How do you work hard and work smart? It didn’t seem like rocket science at first but now…

Here’s the secret to working hard and smart

You manage your ingredients. You stay focused on the ingredients that matter. That leads you to ask the obvious question. Which ingredients are important? What are these “secret ingredients” for that matter?

Hard work is…

• Logarithmic. Growth, progress, success – it all comes quickly in the beginning but the gains decrease becoming more difficult over time. Playing an instrument, learning to read, writing brilliant ad copy – these all take time.
• Directed. All hard work is directed by desires and goals. You can’t work hard without desires and goals. Even dysfunctional behaviors like laziness and procrastination are driven by desires and goals.
• Persistent. Hard work comes with repeated disaster, failure and discouragement. Hard work isn’t really ever complete. It simply changes form, using our desires and goals to shift its focus from one area to another.
• Slow. Hard work requires time. Logarithmic growth takes lots of time. It’s difficult, painful and brutal. It depends on consistency and repetition, the tools needed to power through anything difficult.

Working smart on the other hand is…

• Exponential. The growth, progress and success come slowly at first, but your gains increase rapidly over time, doubling and quadrupling your effort and results. Building an audience, compounding investments and business growth are all examples of exponential or compounding growth.
• Leverage. Leverage is a multiplier, it dramatically multiplies both your effort and the result. Working with a client is a one-on-one ordeal. Writing a book gives you leverage, enabling you to speak to a limitless audience of people.
• Less involved. Working smart offers freedom and minimizes restrictions typically via outsourcing, delegating, electing and/or management. It gives you the opportunity to create the outcome you want without being hands on and intimate.
• Risky. Loss is an inherent part of working smart. It comes with the potential for accidents, disaster, defeat and failure. Sometimes the things that seem smart turn out to be mistakes. The wise take calculated risks doing what they can to minimize any potential damage.

Work at anything long enough and you’ll see that Hard work is Smart work.

• Stocks may grow exponentially but successful management takes logarithmic skill
• All-star athletes train persistently but they’re called to take on new risks and challenges
• Building a business that grows exponentially requires logarithmic grow that’s brutal, painful and expensive.
• Becoming a bestseller relies on years of logarithmic experience but creates long lasting leverage and financial security.

Want to work hard and smart?

Focus your time, your attention on balancing these key ingredients. Do what you can to use these ingredients, keeping them in harmony. Make it your mission to master these details, to create habits out of them.

This is the secret to working hard and working smart.

Most people can’t do it

That’s the lie we tell ourselves. The sad part is they’re right. They can’t do it, not because they won’t do it or because they can’t do it. But because they haven’t been trained to do it.

They don’t have an answer and they aren’t aware that an answer exists. So they do what most people do.

They give up.

They give up because it’s impossible.

Naysayers will object. “If what you’re saying is true, working hard and working smart is impossible. No one’s perfect, we all have character defects.” What I’m asking for sounds like perfection and we all know nobody’s perfect.

But working hard and smart doesn’t require perfection. It just requires three things: (a) Accepting reality as it is, (b) being honest about your circumstances and (c) continuing to fight for the results you want (using the right ingredients).

That’s it.

You’re going to make mistakes. Yes, we all have character defects. But these three steps are all you need to work hard and smart. When you fail, get back up and try again. Stay engaged and do the work. It’s tough but it creates results.

Working hard/smart requires more than simply focusing on hard work or smarts.

As we’ve seen, it’s the ingredients – our desires, goals and habits that dictate the outcome. Focusing our attention on these details, staying engaged, that’s what matters most.

Bob worked hard but he didn’t work smart.

His unwillingness to take risks, to create leverage, led to his downfall. He ran back and forth to the lake, filling and emptying his buckets. His hard work created imbalance, exhaustion and eventually – pain.

His pain came later, John’s pain came right at the start.

John realized working hard is working smart. His hard work, his smart work started right from the beginning.

It’s the same for you.

Working hard, working smart – it requires balance. Spend your time on the right ingredients and you’ll discover the same. Focus your attention on maintaining balance and you’ll find working hard and working smart comes naturally.