Why balance Smart work & Hard work

For the past 1 year now the biggest debate around me has been nowadays is “which is better? Hard work or smart work?”. According to me, this is one of the most baseless discussions people can get themselves into. You must be thinking why? Because both of them go hand in hand. You can’t achieve great things or perfection just by following one of them. Both of them have their equal importance in times. They have their advantages; however, both of them have few disadvantages if one is not linked to another.

Hard work defines work which is done with extreme effort and endurance. It is a well-known saying that “Hard work is the keyhole to success”, however, it is not going to be complete if it is only the hard work you do and not think of ways to complete them smartly.

Smart work defines the work which is done in a way that it shows a sequential process that makes the job easy to understand for others too. This means, using the power of your brain instead of putting in extra efforts or working for hours. Although this does make sense, smart work can only be done only after you have put yourself to a test of finding multiple ways to complete the job, where you understand which path take longer time and which path is faster , hence a effort of hard work has been done to find the way to work smartly.

What happens if only hard work is done?

1- It takes a toll: Hard work requires a lot of persistence and determination. The ability to work hard every day is also an asset that is appreciated time to time, but the understanding should be clear when to work hard. Let’s think, a person works seven days a week and gets a lot of work done because he spent his maximum time finishing it. He will be seen as a model employee and will get appreciation and possibly a raise too. On the other side the organization will build more expectations from that individual and he/she won’t be able to live up to that expectations some times. This is happening just by implementing hard work; the person will have to work day and night to keep up with his record and hence will seriously hamper health and personal life.

2- It makes you good, but only in one thing: Hard work makes you good, but only in one thing and that is hard work itself. You will in no way be able to expand you skills and exploration field. You will create a habit of working 13-14 hours a day or 7 days a week and this will seriously hamper your learning curve too. You will contain yourself in just doing one thing every day and forget about all the other things you could have had the opportunity to learn you divided your time smartly. You are going to develop a thinking that hard work is everything and you are going to achieve greatness with it, it is and aspect which we can’t deny for sure but also you have to find the balance.

3- It seriously harms your health: As already mentioned, hard work takes a toll. It requires a lot of time and persistence, most of the times you will find yourself sacrificing your sleep. Now, we all know how important it is to get a peaceful sleep to stay healthy, happy, and active however, most of the hard workers will tell you that they need only 2-3 hours of sleep and they can stay active. This is just a temporary phase believe me where one can feel with such little sleep his/her body will stay fit. But slowly with time your body will show the symptoms and weakness which will make it impossible for you to follow the rigid routine you created for self. These things have nothing to with age, rather it’s all in the focus for mental fitness requirement too.

What happens if only smart work is done?

1-It makes you lazy: If you make a habit of smart work, you will eventually start thinking that smart work is a supreme power and you don’t need to work as hard as other people. This thinking is not smart, as it will make you lazy because of just sitting around and using your brain all day for finding short-cuts and easy way of doing everything, which sometimes even complicates the job. In know this sounds good and very comfortable, however, it will make your life very boring and uninteresting.

2- It will give you a feeling of superiority: as it always true that to learn you always have to listen first, but with the system of working smart we tend to lose the scope of learning and listening and hence get stuck in a bubble called “I am the best and I can do it very easily”. Since you will get used to smart work for doing everything, you will start thinking that you are superior to people as you are smarter than them. This shouldn’t be the case as you will start becoming more and more careless by thinking that you have a lot of time and you can solve any problem with your smart work.

3- It also harms your health: since you will get lazy and lose the will to do any physical work, you’ll start harming your health. Physical work is important for your body and just using your brain won’t help you in living a happy life. Just think before you fall on the path of self-harm due to something you thought was good for you.

Conclusion- Find the Balance.

Now, this article is not at all to show which is better or which is bad. This articles main focus is to let you know that everyone needs to find the balance between both. With my personal experience I have found both to be useful and I still try to find the balance so I can bring in more perfection to my job and the output that I give. Smart work comes into play when it takes away some of the intensity of hard work. My motive is to help people in understanding the fact that hard work and smart work can make a great weapon if they are used together. They both cancel out each other’s disadvantages and makes you work with excellence.

Article by Biswajit Chakrabarty