To achieve greater productivity, you need to work smarter, not harder. Working smarter not only boosts productivity, it forces more creativity, and saves precious energy for the things that really matter, like your family. You should be working to live, not living to work. Many of us are passionate about what we do for a living but are perhaps not doing what we really love. For those that are in their dream job there is still room for trying to work smarter by being more organised and playing to your strengths.
What does it really mean to work smarter?
“It means figuring out better, faster ways to work,” says personal productivity expert and trainer Peggy Duncan. You can only do this by taking the occasional stop back and taking an honest look at how you spend your time and continual striving for improvement
Hard work is mentally and physically exhausting. It consumes energy that you need to maintain things that really matter in your life, like your family relations and friendship (or passions, if it’s not your day job). Instead of working yourself to exhaustion, figure out ways to save energy by delegating and outsourcing to achieve the same desired outcome. We talk about this a lot but take a good look at your internal processes and stress test them for potential weakness / issues. If you do all this, you’ll ultimately be happier and less stressed, which means you’ll be more productive overall.
We live in the digital age where it has never been easier to connect with people from all corners of the globe. Smart business owners make the most of this fact by using outsourcing websites like ‘Fiverr’, ‘People per hour’ and ‘freelancer.com’. You can search for freelancers on these sites for almost any kind of work or project who are competing in a global market space so the value is often incredible. A simple way to help you decide to outsource any work is to calculate what your own time is worth in relation to the work. If by doing a particular task you are earning less per hour than what your time is worth…outsource!
Everyone is always looking for ways to get more done with less effort and saving effort can also save money. Whether you own your own business, are an entrepreneur or working for a huge multinational conglomerate, finding ways to save energy and effort by working smarter makes you a more valuable resources to your business or employer. This, in turn, makes you feel more confident, more inspired, and more willing to do whatever it takes whenever necessary.
Many jobs do not value creativity. They want to see results, preferably arrived at by the mantra ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This can be frustrating, especially for people who thrive in a more creative environment. However, if you can apply creativity to achieve the same goal, you’re more likely to enjoy your job and wish to continue doing it. There are right ways and wrong ways to do everything, but in very few cases is there one absolute RIGHT way. Think about how you can use creativity to increase your performance!
If you are working smarter than you are hard, creating a better product or end result with less effort, and applying all your creative faculties to solving the problems of a given task, you’re going to feel better and like you’ve accomplished more. This, in turn, will make you a more positive and productive individual who not only has more time and energy, but you will become someone your friends, family, and coworkers want to be around more, so they can learn from you. This leads to even more inspiration!