Work Hard or Work Smart?

What is important? Hard work or Smart work?

Smart work saves time, gives you time to do other things. Through smart work you can reach your goal much faster. It is the need of the hour.

What you you say? Please share.

This reminds me when I was young. You see, I am the 3rd in the brood of 4 boys with a strict father especially when it comes to household chores. When I am assigned to clean the floor, what I do is to use the mop and not the broom. The proper way is the broom first and then the mop. But using the mop would also eradicate all the dirt including the dust. And the application is just the same.

With work in the office, I do some planning so it wouldn't take a lot of time to finish a task. I used to be a computer programmer so you can imagine the tons of work when there is a bug in the program. Instead of proceeding with the coding at once, I painstakingly do the flowcharting which is the architecture of the program. When the flowchart is correctc, the errors in coding is minimized.

It depends from person to person and varies according to situation. Sometimes hard work is needed to be successful while at times smart work. It is the ability to recognize which is which and act accordingly that works best.

You are right that working smart is the need of the hour. Gone are the days when we think working hard to earn results. But same result can be achieved working smart. Computer has given new meanings to smart working. Every work can be done either through hard working or smart working. With the help of computers you can perform the same job with great accuracy and speed but with minimum efforts. I think in every work there is an opportunity for a smart work. But for a smart work it needs good strategic planning and thinking.

Some people do hard work and others do smart work. Only through hard work, one learns smart work. Smart work has a well-planned procedure and helps to reach the goal faster. Both hard work and smart work targets the best result, but the brain factor is more in the latter.

In have a question for those who are divided between work hard and work smart. Which do you think is better: you climb stairs to the forth floor or take a lift.
If you climb, you will have a good work out, which improves your health. If you take a lift,you will save time and work efficiently.

I think you got to mix them both. If you work smart, you are going to do things better, but when you have deadlines, sometimes the best thing to do is work hard, because only that way you are going to accomplish deadlines.

It's a mix of both really. I know people who rather work smart, and I know people who rather work hard!

To be very frank both are as good, you know some people know how to work and get the best results for completing their assigned jobs where as the hard worker does the same walking on a tougher path. However, as long they do not adapt to wrong tactics both are fine. One can do something with shortcuts but the same person has to work hard for some other jobs. The result depends on the sum total of all work done, smart or hard.

For

- Smart work is really the need of the hour.
- Smart work saves lots of time and allows you to be more organized.
- Through smart work your goals can be reached faster.
- Doing smart work allows you to save time for other things which you might not get by doing hard work like, exercise, spending time with family etc.
- Smart work brings lots of recognition from the society and allows you to grow more in the industry you are in.

Against

- Hard work takes lots of time just to make things correct.
- It is totally time consuming and exhausting experience, as after doing lots of work you left out with less energy to do anything else.
- Hard work doesn't allow you to fully use your brain and it pushes you for more physical work.
- In terms of determination and persistence hard work is really important but not lot can be achieved.
- Working hard is not enough as it might not bring the best result of a problem or a situation.

This is the common question I may encounter in any forum I have joined. Working hard takes a lot of sacrifice, more efforts, and it is too tiring. Working smart gets the job one efficiently with less efforts, time and sacrifice.