A Smart Worker is still a Hard Worker

“Work smarter not harder.”  It’s become a cliché.  The idea is that it pays to become more efficient and effective in your work by being smart about it, minimizing unnecessary effort, expending less energy, and saving time on the job, for example.  To work smarter not harder is to be more productive while expending less energy, time, and resources.  That’s good.

But there is a negative side to this quip.  It seems to encourage the idea that hard work is something to be avoided altogether, as if you’re crazy or stupid to work hard for anything, a kind of subtle encouragement toward laziness.

Doing good work and being a smart worker still requires working hard.  For example, a smart worker is a developing worker.  She or he continues to learn by developing his/her skills and talents.  This takes time, effort, focus, and commitment.  It is a form of hard work, if done rightly.

The “smart” part of working smarter doesn’t just happen.  It is intentional, sought after, and worked for, obtained by old fashion sweat-of-the-brow daily practice, pursuit of education and training, and focused attentiveness in habit formation.  And it doesn’t skip steps or take short-cuts.

For example, working smarter not harder may involve reading the directions first, as time well spent, rather than tossing them aside in an effort to save time and quickly get the job done.  Likewise, following through each step properly, without skipping steps, is working smarter, rather than harder, as in the old saying: “Measure three times before you cut once” or more commonly said, “Measure twice; cut once.”  Thus, taking extra steps to do a job well and quickly, may seem counterintuitive, but it is still an example of working smarter rather than harder.

Giving attention to detail takes concentration, mental energy, and extra time; but this too is also an example of working smarter not harder.  As the saying goes, “The Devil is in the details.”  Walt Disney is an example of one who gave much attention to detail.   He was both a hard worker and a smart one. 

While attending graduate school, I had a roommate who was a chef.  He taught me the kitchen-working principle of “clean as you go.”  I don’t cook much.  But, when I do cook, I clean as I go.  It makes the overall cooking experience so much easier to deal with, no big mess to clean up afterward.  This too is working smarter not harder, though it is still working hard.

Planning ahead, staying organized, putting things back where they belong once you’ve finished with them, maintaining a current and updated filing system, making a “to-do” list, not procrastinating but doing immediate follow-through, taking the initiative to contact others to get answers to pressing questions, rather than waiting for them to come to you, these all appear to be extra steps and perhaps unnecessary steps, hard work, but are examples of actually working smarter not harder.

Bottom line: When one consistently does good quality work, you can be sure that he or she is not only a smart worker but a hard worker as well.  Working smarter does not negate the need to also be a hard worker.  We should all be good workers.  And since most of us have to work hard to make a living, let us learn to be smart about it as well.