Working Hard or Working Smart

I was in one of the bookstores near my house and was checking books at self-help section suddenly, one book caught my eyes, the title is “Thrive”.

I googled instantaneously what is the real definition of “Thrive”. The Cambridge dictionary defines Thrive as an “act to grow, to develop well or vigorously”.

“Thrive and being vigorous”- that instantaneously reminds me about someone who asked me during my sharing session at one conference I involved as a speaker last year, she raised a question that looks very common and very simple ; ‘What is the difference between Work Hard and Work Smart?’

We found lots of quotes everywhere about Work hard and Work Smart. The most popular ones is “Don’t Work Hard, but Work Smart”.

Byron Dorgan once quoted “ Working hard and working smart sometimes can be different things”

There is also an anonymous saying?‘Before you work smart, you must work hard’.

And the list of quotes you can find numerously via the internet!

While being encouraged to write about this point of view, I still “google”-ing on what others have thought of between the working hard vs working smart dichotomy. Then I found one from entrepreneur.com article when the author Micheal Moroney wrote an article “The Myth of Working Hard vs Working Smart”. You can read his article here : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230527

He says ; “The problem with the working hard vs. working smart dichotomy is that all too often we frame the choice as one in which we can only choose "hard" or "smart." The question we should be asking is, why aren't we doing both? “

This is very subjective – not a right or wrong answer – but to push someone to work smart without having the experience how work hard is all about, then the difference can’t be measured.

Going back to the question being raised to me at the conference, about the difference of “Work Hard and Work Smart”, for my point of view, there is never a method of work smart before you experienced the work hard part.

I recalled my own experiences where I have gone through challenging years of how starting back from career break as mid-level position to head of department position within three years – so I could define the difference between work hard and work smart, in my own point of view, based on my experience.

I shared to her and the audience in the conference, a story of my own experience, how from being an engineer without business development experience,?I was being moved to assist the company to get more projects by engaging, networking and developing connection with various parties.

What it takes to shift the mindset of doing all about technical works to marketing (business development area) and convincing people is not an overnight work – understanding the technical process and executing what is being required on paper versus being able to present and to convince people of higher level from one company to another company is completely two different things. I think those with the same shoes , with the same experience of shifting yourself from being engineers with technical drawings and engineering procedure to Business Development, will understand this!

You will experience lots of things happen to switch from what you usually doing to something new you have to do. In my case – the work hard translated into lots of challenges – I read all company’s project reports from the past ten years by taking extra hour after working hour to do this so that I was able to be fluent to convince people on what we have done, what we can do, what the solutions we can offer, taking note on each project’s lesson learnt, understanding previous clients and taking notes on the client’s nature businesses and lots of things you never done before which required you to work harder than usual.

The feeling of uncomfortable landed in your mind and heart, but you still have to work hard to find solutions how can you remove the discomforts feelings and becoming better in your new area, new position, new knowledge, in new skill...

Initially it will require the hard work – until you become more confident, more comfortable – that is now, it means you understand the process, you understand your own strength – it is a time to start a Work Smart process

From those experiences , I do believe that, going through the process of “working hard” will indeed lead you to what you call “ working smart”. If you are aware of the wisdom behind the Work Hard, so one day, you will re-strategize the process based on what you accomplished and what you have learned, so that things now easier for you, then you start to Work Smart.

Last but not least, how do I relate about the book with the word “Thrive” on it, with the question raised to me about “Work Hard or Work Smart” thingy – it obviously caught my mind that, to THRIVE is to WORK HARD in order for us to WORK SMART.?Personally, I relate the word “THRIVE” to WORK HARD, and from there, we can build our own system of “Working Smart”.

I reckon you to relate this working hard - working smart based on your own position, nature of work, passion in whatever you do in life!