“Work Smart, Not Hard”- How much does it work?

Work smart, not hard.” I am sure that you have come across this saying at least once by now, or if you are following quotation pages on any kind of social media platforms, then more than once. But what does it exactly mean? Does smart work replace hard work everywhere and in every task? Can it do so? What if something needs to be done with high precision? What if even after having enough tools and sources of accomplishing a task smartly, you still cannot complete it without paying attention to every single detail and without putting all your efforts and time into it? Actually, only smart work works only in a few thing, that too, if its already done once by somebody else. You can really make and do something smartly by using the available gadgets and information for doing something but the hard work required to do that thing cannot always be replaced by smartness. For example, if you have to make an architectural design of a house, you can have access to and use all the applications on computer to make the design but won’t you have to use your mind and take your time to make an original design through to its perfection? You will have to. Let’s take another example, if you are preparing for an exam and you have access to all the information required to get good grades in that exam and you know what is more important and what is not so important keeping in mind the previous patterns of that exam but what if the old questions don’t repeat again? You will certainly get lower grade than expected. Here, if you would have studied the whole of the syllabus rather than considering only a good portion crucial for preparation, you could have gotten better grades. Let’s take one more example- suppose you are an artist and you know what you want to paint on a canvass, you have seen many tutorials on the internet about how to do it in simpler and easier manner, but still you will have to put all of your efforts to paint it according to your chosen style and desired end product and it may take you days, weeks, or even months for its completion.

What I am pressing upon here is it’s not always that you can choose smart work over hard work. One needs to coagulate smart work with hard with in order to excel in anything. Choosing smart work over hard work for everything may make your end product or outcome mediocre sometimes because it’s already tried and tested by somebody else. While choosing only hard work may be hectic and overly pressing on you, choosing only smart work may be too easy and useless; achieving excellence and getting exceptional results in anything needs both hard and smart work in consonance with each-other.