“A dream is not meant to be dreamed forever; instead, it’s meant for you to work hard and smart enough until success wakes you up from it.”

― Edmond Mbiaka

Introduction

You’ve most probably been told to either work hard or smart. This isn’t technically a bad thing but, using both can take you even further. There are people out there who have been working hard for decades but aren’t any more successful than you and me. These people spend more time than a 9 to 5 working their butts off. If they were to incorporate a smart work ethic on top of their hard work, then their results would go up exponentially.

Some people think only working smart is the ultimate highway to success but as with most things; combining different aspects to create a new approach is the supreme way to go.

What Is Smart Hard Work?

The concept of smart hard work is a bit out there. We can easily define what hard work is. If you want to become successful in the long run, you’ll have to put in long hours at work. You’ll have to wake up early, before anyone else, and you’ll have to stay up late when everyone else is enjoying their evenings.

Smart work, on the other hand, is a different matter. There are no guidelines on what working smart means and how it differs from hard work, but there are some traits present in people who are highly efficient which we can use to describe smart work.

Discarding Physical Work For Mental Work

Instead of being the hands of the operation, you’ll have to become the brains. Transition from doing menial tasks to performing tasks such as idea making, closing deals, delegating work, creating business plans, etc. Before you make the transition, you’ll need to improve your cognitive capabilities, which means you’ll need to learn more, challenge yourself further, actively go out of your way to solve real-world problems and gain street smarts. Becoming the brain means turning into the general.

Life Management Skills

If you want to be well off financially, you’ll need to have good money management skills, no matter how much you earn. If you want to work smart, you’ll need to be in good health. Regularly take care of your body with exercise and the right diet. If you want to be happy and feel secure, you’ll need to have the capacity for loving yourself and others and finding the right spouse that supports you on your journey and vice versa. Those are all skills we don’t learn at school. Unfortunately, you can’t even learn these valuable skills from your parents and siblings in most cases. Because they’re so rare. Not many people know how to work smart and how to manage their lives properly.

Understanding And Exploiting Loopholes In Your Industry

You have to know your profession inside out. luckily, we live in the digital age where virtually anything is possible. There should be multiple courses out there covering your specific industry, comprehensively. You have to keep in mind- all systems are not perfect, with that knowledge you should be able to connect the dots and find a loophole to exploit. It might be easier to find loopholes in one industry as opposed to another but they are always there.

Being In An Industry Where Your Chances Of Success Are High

We all have certain things we are good at by default. Choosing an industry that naturally accommodates your talent would be a great idea but, if it’s too late for turnbacks, you can always maximize your ability to perform better in your current industry.

Having An Optimistic Take On Life

One very important component of smart work is to always have a positive outlook on life. No matter how hard things are. Much like you can’t live a positive life with a negative mind, so you can’t be a smart worker with negative thinking and a pessimistic outlook. There’s a very simple reason why.

When you experience negative emotions, your creative and thinking horizons contract. You focus all your cognitive power on whining and feeling sorry for yourself. As a consequence, you become blind to opportunities and ideas that would take you a step further.

Understanding Competition And Knowing Who To Partner With, For Maximum Gains

You need to know who will be a potential rival and who will be a potential friend. First, scout out everyone within your niche then decide who is similar to you and who is moving in a different direction. Rivals are very important because their difference sparks a creative edge within your company, you’ll both drive each other to new heights leading to faster technological and financial development. “Friend” companies are the ones you outsource from, you both help each other out in mutualistic fashion (you scratch my back I scratch your back, vibes), doing so will allow for maximum yield on both sides.

Focusing On Delivering And Capturing Value 

Smart work means understanding that there are only three activities that are important for maximizing your success. The first one is creating value (innovating), the second one is delivering value (marketing) and the third one is capturing value (invoicing). If you want to be a smart worker you’ll have to create value that people are prepared to pay for. Let people know what you can bring to the table then deliver it, negotiate everything with the knowledge; no money means no value. Allocate 75% of your time to very important tasks/work and outsource the rest.

Being Innovative And Bold

Being Innovative separates the leaders from the followers. Try to create or improve what is already there. Create a mental timeline where you see how long a product will last for in the market and create something better before anyone else. Thinking is a primary factor in smart work, the more you can have thoughts of substance, the closer you’ll be to comprehending the art of smart work. Writing down at least 10 ideas a day whether crappy or not, will help you become a natural thinker.

Leadership Traits

You will have to become assertive and make well informed big decisions under a lot of pressure. You will have to become the Pilar that supports everyone and encourage them to grow. You’ll have to be calm cool and collected, always. Being a leader isn’t the easiest thing in the world but, it’s something that smart workers need to receive maximum results in their industry. (I will go in-depth about leadership in a later blog post).

Leveraging Other People’s Time And Creating A Great Team

Doing all the work by yourself is the biggest enemy to smart work. If you want to effectively work smart you have to learn to delegate work and responsibility. It would be a good idea to create a team you handpick because; you should know the competency levels of all your teammates. They should do most of the practical work whilst you do your mental work. If you and your team have too much work then outsourcing would be a great idea because; 1. You will be creating more job opportunities and, 2. More work can be done in short amounts of time.

Leveraging Other People’s Money In Such A Way That Both Parties’ Benefit

As a smart worker, you must have abundance in mind, because money is a very abundant resource. You’ll need to maximize the amount of money received for an idea/service and, in exchange for said money, deliver the quality that that money has purchased because as a smart worker, you’ll need to have a good reputation for all dealings made.

Create Assets, Not Liabilities

Smart workers are more concerned about passive and portfolio income, this means you own an intellectual property that is set up once but consistently generates income every month. Examples include real estate, businesses, stocks (EFT’s), books, videos on YouTube, royalties from songs, etc. If you want to become a smart worker you’ll need to create passive income that will be stable as soon as you can, because trading in your time for money isn’t smart, so to speak.

Being Proactive And Showing High Emotional Control

As a smart worker, you’ll have to become a problem-solving machine. Identify problems before they happen or take care of problems before they become too big. Having high emotional tolerance helps because as a problem-solving machine you mustn’t break under pressure, you have to make sound decisions most of the time otherwise you risk losing everything. A great place to improve your problem-solving skills is brilliant.org:

Networking Well And Creating New Contacts

You also need help from all kinds of different people that are higher up the social hierarchy. Smart workers know very well that one right person in the phone-book can save them years of hard work. That’s why they become excellent networkers, with sniper precise targeting when it comes to why they network and with whom, all to maximize their value creation. Smart workers ask for help when needed, they do not put their ego in front of all their hopes and dreams. They are not frightened by rejection, if they get rejected then, they proceed to the next willing person, never wasting their shots.

Knowing Your Limits As A Human-Being

Smart workers know how to set limits. They put a lot of thought into their minimums and maximums, and they know how to maximize value creation and quality of life. They know how to set limits in their own lives and with other people. They aren’t afraid to speak up and set very strict limits with their employers, clients, superiors and even family. Smart workers do this because they have to maintain a good frame of mind and trying to make everyone happy leaves everyone dissatisfied.

Knowing When To Play Your Cards

Smart workers don’t reveal all their cards, even to the people closest to them. They need hidden cards to take anyone by surprise when needed, not for any malicious intent but, for the element of surprise.

Plasticity

Probably the most important quality of smart workers is the fact that they’re agile and adaptable. Hard workers are resistant to change. They just want to work hard and when the circumstances change, they get lost and disorientated. Environments have become too unstable, volatile and unpredictable to only work hard and hope for the best. On the other hand, smart workers love change because they know that every change brings new opportunities and, as I’ve mentioned before in a previous post (building a success mindset), new opportunities lead to new horizons.

Self-Improvement

Smart workers are constantly striving to improve how they get things done. They want the very best out of themselves and that is exactly why smart workers are dominating the workforce. They have the same mindset highly successful people have and, that alone makes them more likely to succeed.

End

To sum up smart hard work; it’s hard work but, done flexibly and efficiently leading to work which is the very best conceivable quality that can be produced (well that’s what I’ve concluded).

Thanks for reading! I know for a fact you got something interesting from this. Having said that, I trust that you’ll revisit next, when we take a look at “Procrastination”

If you enjoyed this be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments, like and share. It will mean the world to me.