Smart Work 101: How To Avoid Difficulties, Be More Productive And Get Things Done Fast

‘Smart Work’ sounds simple but also quite vague, right? It’s something that comes up every time people talk about productivity, goals and success. You’ll hear something like ‘working smart is the secret to success.’ Or ‘Don’t work hard, work smart.’ Or ‘If working hard was the key to success, the donkey would be the most successful.’  But what does working smart even mean? Let’s understand with a simple example: Say you have your exams coming and you have very little time to prepare. You can either work hard and go through each and every topic one by one. Or you gather all past exam questions, make a note of all repeating topics, prioritize each one based on their occurrence rate, and then start from the important stuff to the lesser important ones. This approach helps allocate the limited time as well as energy appropriately and ensures better performance in the exam. That’s quite literally smart work, right? People that are successful have always worked smart by conserving and investing their energy and resources on things that actually matter the most. Working smart helps us be more efficient, productive and strategic, all of which is needed for overall success.

Before we move ahead, I do want to stress that smart work does not mean easy or lazy work. Most people conflate smart work with convenience or laziness. Here’s what I want you to remember: ‘Work hard smartly’. Smart work, more accurately implies planning and creating a strategy beforehand that allows us to allocate and invest our effort, time and resources appropriately so as to avoid unnecessary difficulties and increase our overall rate of success. Smart work in no way implies avoiding working hard.

Now, let’s get to the main part: how to work smart? While it is true that working smart is more ideal and beneficial, most people still struggle to work smartly. Not because they can’t, but because they don’t know how to. Frankly, it’s more of a skill issue. Also, how to work smart is not something that is like a well-defined set of steps or a specific process since every task has its own specific requirements to meet and procedures to follow. Working smart is more of a skill and there are certain guidelines that will help improvise and innovate to work smart. Let’s go over them one by one:

• Find a helping hand

We can’t do everything by ourselves. And even the things that we can do, becomes so much easier if we have someone to give us a hand (granted they do not create any problems). Not only does it conserve our time and energy, just having some to assist you gives you more courage and confidence. If you are able to get some help, you can also focus on the real important stuff and utilize your time and effort more effectively. So anytime you have some task or errands, ask yourself “Do I need to do this myself?” If not, try asking a friend or a family member or you can pay someone else to do that. Like paying someone to clean your house or do your laundry while you focus on work, studies or travel. Or asking a friend to submit your job application if a vacancy opens at their workplace in case you are job-hunting. Or any other task that does not require you and can be assigned to others. This helps us achieve more, waste less energy, willpower and time, and be more productive overall. Being smart means learning how to make or request other people to help you with your goals or ambitions or tasks so that you can focus more intensely on the important stuff. You can only do that if all the menial or non-important stuff gets handled for you.

• Build a system

Systems are excellent for repetitive tasks that are predictable and can be isolated. In simple terms, a system is just an organized way of doing things, a method to be precise. Like how you complete an assignment: You collect, analyze, interpret and then present information on the specific assignment topic. All the steps here, followed sequentially, allows you to achieve your objective of ‘completing the assignment’. That’s a perfect system. And almost every task or goal can be completed through a certain system, which can optimize energy, time and resources to maximize your success rate. My advice is to use an Action Plan. An Action Plan is just a strategy that consists of steps or actions in order to complete an objective or goal. Read this ‘Action Plan 101: Create The Perfect Strategy To Become More Productive And Successful’ article if you want to learn more on how to plan and build an effective Action Plan.

Let’s go over some examples to understand how even the simplest of tasks can have a system: A system for running a shopping errand could be beginning from the shop farthest to you and ending at the shops closest to your house so that you do not have to carry unnecessary load during the entire period. You can further separate and allocate errands on specific days based on route or location you need to take, say the supermarket and the drycleaner might be close by or be on direction or route. Here’s another example: A good system for performing in your examination would be to complete the questions in this order: Questions that consume the least time and you know most about, then Questions that consume the most time and you know most about, then Questions that consume the least time and you know little about, then Questions that consume the most time and you know little about, then Questions that consume the least time and you know nothing about, then Questions that consume the most time and you know nothing about. Following this order can optimize the use of your limited time and energy, especially in such a stressful situation.

• Analyze then tweak the process

Sometimes you also need to improvise and be creative when doing things. You need to study the entire process and then try to innovate and figure out ways that will help you optimize and tweak things. And tweaking the process also needs to be ideal to both you and the task itself, hence analyzing beforehand is crucial. You need to carefully study the process or even do it once or twice and get familiar with all the steps, requirements, timing, etc. It is also important to know that things do not always go the usual way or how we planned, so it is necessary to be creative and tweak the process a bit to fit your circumstances or needs. Read this article ‘Things Never Go As Planned: How To Deal With It’ to understand how we can better adapt to unexpected turn of events.

But how to actually tweak the process? This is quite vague and can vary based on the task and the person. But some common things you can try include adding or removing steps, changing the way you do certain things (like letting others help with minor things), change the order of the steps of the process, delay or rush certain stages, group steps to finish them in bulk, and so on.

Have you ever seen one of the cooking videos on youtube where they teach you how to cut coriander or any greens or tomatoes in bulk? (This one feels quite relatable so I’m using it.) Same thing here. Still, this is kind of subjective and each person or task has different potential for innovation or improvisation, so let’s go over a few examples to understand better: You can either take notes with your pen while studying in class or simply highlight the important part in your textbook that matches the notes. Either way the outcome is the same right? You are taking notes. Here’s another example: You want to write an article. You can do this the usual and hard way i.e. start from top to down, thinking and pondering at each and every line which generally takes a lot of time and effort. Or you can create a rough sample at first, by writing everything that comes to mind and then slowly trim it, like how an artist sculpts his or her statue. Try it. You will realize that the second approach is far more effective, quicker and requires less effort.

• Prioritize and filter out

Doing things smartly means being able to identify where your attention is needed the most. You need to be able to prioritise and filter tasks based on their significance and urgency. You cannot waste resources and energy on menial matters when more important tasks are pending. It’s like being lost in house chores when your work-related duties are incomplete. Some things require more attention and dedication than others.

Since this is quite straightforward, I’ll end it with this one example: Say you need to renovate your house but you’re a bit short on both money and time. So instead of focusing on the entire house which is not practical at this point, you might need to prioritize in this order: first the bathroom and kitchen, then the parking or lawn or front space, then the living room, then individual room and if possible stairs as so on. Simple right? Prioritizing the important stuff first and the rest if needed or possible.

• Look for options

Options are beneficial for various reasons. Having options empowers us, makes us more confident, gives us more leverage, more freedom and so on. With more choices, we are more resourceful and gain freedom to choose the most efficient or effective way. Hard tasks are hard because of a lack of options or limited options. There is no way to improvise and we get stuck with the status quo. And sometimes, the only option is the hard way. However, in most instances, we can find alternatives if we look hard enough. We can even get creative and create some options for ourselves. Either way, being resourceful and free will help us avoid unnecessary challenges and boost our chances of success.

Let’s go over a few examples: Say you are on a job hunt and attending interviews almost weekly. Now, you need to have your credentials with you, in case they want to see it. You can either carry your physical hard copies with you everywhere or you can simply scan every important one and share them digitally when needed or requested. (This is helpful in so many other scenarios tbh.) See how the option of creating digital copies just eliminated a serious hassle i.e. the need to carry your documents which comes with so many unnecessary risks like theft or loss or damage or simple inconvenience. Plus, now you can access a lot of your documents anytime, anywhere. Here’s another simple one: You can record your lectures in class to skip taking notes and give full attention to learning. You can then just binge watch the important lectures and practice using those just before the exams. Much more convenient and efficient than taking and storing notes, right!?

Being able to do things smartly is not something innate. Sure, talent and creativity helps but not as much as it is exaggerated. Rather, it’s more of a skill. With enough practice and experience, you will soon find yourself thinking outside of the box. You will try to find innovative ways to do every task you come across and you will start to improvise your actions and behaviours to be more effective, efficient and simply more productive. Again, I do want to remind you that smart work does not mean skipping hard work but it does allow you to avoid unnecessary problems and be more successful as you improve your productivity by utilizing your focus, effort and resources more accurately and adequately. So the next time you set a goal with blueprint, try to strategize an action plan based on these principles, so that you pursue your goals and ambitions smartly.