Personal Take - “Work Smarter” is so cliche- a rant, reflection, and a way forward

Scrolling through my Linkedin Feed, I saw a rather controversial video repurposing the “Work Smarter not Harder” preach-work from the 90s. The comment section was a mess, partly because the speaker was being targeted as a bubble gum chewing preppy who has no real life experience, and partly because we’ve got the old school gang saying, ‘back in my day’. But the title stuck. It's about time we revisit the saying and re-define what this really means. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve re-read the source of all self-help and productivity content - Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Working Smarter means you can easily 1) prioritize, 2) begin with the end in mind, 3) schedule accordingly, 4) delegate, and 5) take breaks. 

But calling it “smarter”… has an undertone to it. Does this mean people who don’t and can’t prioritize, delegate and take breaks are working dumber? Is what they’re doing considered to be insanity?

It made me pause and ruminate for a while. The value of working hard is part of the key traits we were taught as kids. We give our best effort, we do our best to achieve, we are trained to be top students so we can go to top universities and claim great jobs with a high pay, so we’ll have a fruitful and enriching career. 

For this, we had to study hard. We have to cram in as much information from the PTE into our tiny heads just so we can pass a 100-item test that may or may not have anything to do with our future. We spend hours in a lab dissecting a sacrificial rat, frog, rabbit or cat even, just to study their musculature, and then boil and clean their bones and create a skeletal diagram… that would only go to the waste bin as soon as the professor looks at it and signs your grade - that is required hard work - physically and emotionally. 

We grew up doing things the hard way. Professors discouraged our quirky new maths because we had to stick with long form division. We had to learn calculus, when we didn’t even get to know how to compute our own taxes until our first paycheck (and the dismay that came with the tax deductions). 

Now as we stepped up on our career ladders, we have that “Work hard and win” mentality imbued upon us. It’s what got us here. We can’t delegate our Physics projects, we had to do it ourselves... then again, we had classmates who had access to more resources so they got their nannies and carpenters to build them a solar system out of styrofoam and glitters - is that what’s called “working smarter” because they didn't lift a finger, and instead, used their resources? We might be up to something here...

All those years we were studying hard - were we groomed to “work dumber” (harder) to succeed, then? 

Prioritize. Keep your to do list short. Calendar your activities. Delegate. Automate. Focus on results, not time. Sure. Quite easy to say. The bigger question is, “But do you have the resources and support to do this?”

Empowering an employee / a colleague to “work smarter” entails :

Having the culture that respects the employee’s time, and offers flexibility. 

The EUs were the first to adopt this, so when I worked with an EU colleague in the Philippines and sent them an urgent email after office hours, their response made me wince… but they’re right! However, they are a dependency to my process - and without their input, I’m putting a whole team on hold. Sure, I can tell them to just wait until the morning… but that will put their urgent conversation with their contact on hold until the next day considering the time difference. There are many pressure points in this situation… because the culture and behavior to say no to this system is not there. 

BPOs always have the same metric - an emphasis on Call Time, versus resolution / close rates. Pressure on TAT, instead of CSAT. Why? Because time is, quite literally, golden. This encourages local call centers to impose performance goals that require an agent to resolve an issue within 3 minutes, regardless of its complexity, just so they can take as many calls as possible within a day. Sure, whoever made the structure and the bid works smarter - more calls taken = profit. But does this mean that the agents on the phone who can’t even take a bio break are working dumber? No. They’re on a backend of a system that doesn’t respect their time. When a Self-help guru stepped in our small room of super stressed out support agents and said, "Guys, you have to work smarter!", we made a meme out of it for weeks. Did the training pay off? No, because as much as the techniques taught were good and well-meaning, the infrastructure and management prerogative to move forward wasn't there. 

Having the resources to support your employee’s day to day requirements.

Resources means having a good budget allocated for the right tools to help in automating tasks, reporting on results, compiling data that can be used to build a playbook, etc. 

This also means having the right people in place to delegate the excess work too. “Wait, you’re doing things end to end?” While admirable, the market trend for optimum efficiency is to divide your team based on your desired process and outcomes, with respect to their skills. There are perks for being a team of generalists - you can swap them around all the time when a team member is out. But, there are also merits if you have a team of generalists and specialists in between - people who can manage a specific part of the process your generalists find to be tedious. 

Which brings us back to point number 1 - tedious, repetitive process can be automated, if not delegated - but do you have the ~resources and ~cost allocation to do make this happen?

If the answer is NO, then think twice and think hard before you tell a co-worker to “work smarter”. 

Now I will make a segue towards the socio-political landscape in the Philippines. 

Why is it that every time financial aid / assistance or a shift in systems is brought about, there’s always that side that says, “Why don’t they work smart enough so that they’re not (literally) poor?”

Case in point, when a percentage of Philippine PUVs (jeepneys) were being phased out and jeepney drivers went on strike to save their livelihood, the common reactions were:

“Well, you didn’t work well enough to not have an emergency fund” - A jeepney driver earns roughly 4 dollars (1 dollar - 50 php) per trip, which takes anywhere between 1.5 to 3 hours depending on the route and traffic. Their day starts as early as 5 am and ends at 11 PM just so they can have as many trips as possible. They take small lunch breaks, but on a regular day, they work 14 hours straight - to get anywhere from 6 to 10 trips. On a really, really good day with no traffic and full capacities guaranteed, they can earn 40 dollars - for a full day of labor - but how likely is this? From that pot money, they’d have to deduct their gas expenses and daily food expenses. Most of the time, they don’t even own the jeepney, they’re just renting it out from an owner who imposes a cut off. How much do they take home after all the fees? With a family to feed, elderly to look out for, and kids to send to school, in an economy that’s pummeled with an ever growing inflation rate, what will your 10-15 dollars a day do? 

“Why don’t you get another job? Like, learn how to be a VA?”, says the VA who has a 20 dollar per hour rate, working in the confines of their condo… to a 60 year old man whose only skill is driving around the manila chaos. 

“Just follow the government and just pay for the new jeepney model, if you want to keep working, pay up”, says the millennial earning a thousand dollars a month in their posh marketing career, to a retiree who barely has means to make ends meet, let alone pay 20 thousand dollars just to continue working. 

The jeepney franchise owners are working real smart. The time-poor, money-poor drivers are working hard. But is it really their fault? 

When your transportation system focuses on decreasing the number of accessible PUVs to give way to more private cars on the road to "ease congestion", when your government’s primary goal is to modernize without concern for welfare - is it the driver's fault for not having enough savings, and not knowing how to use Upwork? 

In the same vein, is a stressed employee who works 12 hours a day who can’t delegate, who has multiple dependencies, who has no tools to automate and who has no chance to “chill out” - working dumber and not helping themselves enough? 

Why don't they help themselves?

The thing is, as early as the 1800s, self-help has always been focused on getting the individual to be more productive - so in the end, society will benefit from them. There is a focus on one’s personal responsibility, contributions and production. 

“If you don’t want to improve and do self-help, nobody’s going to do it for you”

While true, this very individualistic ideology then FREES the central authorities from being responsible of taking care of you. 

“Well you didn’t help yourself enough, now you’re asking us to help you? Why are you asking for hand outs, you're not our responsibility”

Huh.

'Work with a goal and a purpose in mind' would be how I'd phrase it.

It all starts at home. 

When you tell your kids to clean their room, be specific enough in your communication. Rather than making (and expecting) your child to have their room spic and span, and then giving them a hard time if it’s not done on time, educate them. Set the priorities and work allocations for them. 

"Put away your toys, fix your bed. When you’re no longer doing schoolwork this afternoon, dust your windowsill. If you need help reaching the tops of your cabinet, let me know and I will help you. That way, when you enter your room, you won’t trip on your toys, and spiders won’t hide under your pillow (bit of a stretch, I know). "

This simple instruction already sets them up for success because 1) they know exactly what to do, 2) they know when to do it, 3) they know they can ask for help and are encouraged to do so, 4) they know WHY they are doing it and what its effects are. 

The education system should support values that foster innovation - and when technology is lacking - imagination. 

Schools are so focused on making students read, memorize, recite, and just - do. Do this, do that. Write this, memorize this Preamble word by word and recite it in class- all 50 of you. My degree back in Uni was BS Psychology, but my course required me to take duckpin bowling ffs - when I could have been branching out to management, or med sci. 

Courses have a lot of electives up to your third year that do not make sense. Under those elective subjects are wacky modules that are not exactly related to your course. At third year, I was skinning a dead cat literally because apparently it will help me on my career as a Behavioral Therapist. It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense. Our educational system isn’t “smart” enough to optimize the learning experience because the core focus is on the number of subjects taken, grades- and profit. 

An educational system that has a succinct curriculum and allows students to branch out and forge their own path, choose the relevant subjects that support their career choices, etc. will not only encourage students to expand their horizons, it will also prepare them better for the real world where one is not confined in just one function. 

Responsible leadership is required

Once again, begin, with the end in mind. And if you’re leading a team, let alone a school with thousands of aspirants, you need to have a solid vision NOT just for yourself and your board member’s futures, but at the same time, your students’ career paths. 

Antiquated curriculums should be abolished and changed to fit the new trends, or tailor-fitted at least, to be complementary. 

It works now, but it might not work next year. “Don’t fix the wheel if it isn’t broken”

The wheel isn’t broken until time and circumstances say so - and before this happens, prevent it, before your cart crashes.

Adaptability is a key trait to ensure your success alongside that of the hundreds of people depending on you. 

Likewise, having authority figures - in the form of the people you “follow”, the officials you elect, etc - who care more about collective success - a win-win- rather than an I-win should be on the top of your list. Set aside personality politics and clout. The people you put in power over you should be the people who mean well and have your best interests at heart. They should have real, quantifiable, verifiable results, and are not afraid to stand up against feedback and criticisms - leaders who are willing to steer the country into a new direction if instead of sink it with propaganda, nationalism and tradition. 

The counter argument for this long litany would be- to what end? What for? We all suffer and inevitably die anyway, why even try? I don't have an answer to this and I am not immune to its effects- but for now, I would like to put emphasis on the fact that--- as long as proper, consistent, repeatable, scalable, and improvable systems aren't in place- at home, at school, at work, in society and governance, etc- we are bound to stress ourselves by having to work harder and faster. 

No matter how much we improve ourselves, there is no escaping unnecessary "hard work" and stagnation if everyone else isn't supported, empowered, and recognized. So let's think of it not just as an individual, but as society.