Working Hard Vs Working Smart

Working Hard Vs Working Smart

Todays topic is working hard vs working smart. A very important subject because you need to both to succeed. The phrase “busy idiot” comes from working hard but in the wrong places or in places you don’t need to be. On the flipside you can be working smart but if you're not putting the hours in then you're never going to succeed. So, what do I mean by all this?

What is working hard?

Working hard is putting the hours in day in day out. If your competitor is putting in 8 hours a day then you must put in more if you want to be successful. If you put in 10 hours a day over the course of the year that’s an extra 730 hours more than your competitor, or 1 whole month non stop. That will make a difference!

How many hours?

This will vary by individual as we all have different commitments and responsibilities. For me, I started when I was 23 years old with hardly any commitments. I worked a 9-5, then I would come home and workout then be on my laptop till 1 or 2am and I would do that 5 days a week. I kept weekends for time with my girlfriend as we lived apart. The point is something is better than nothing, its common to hear the excuse “I don’t have time.” Perhaps true in some cases but a lot of the time it’s just an excuse. For example, I challenge anyone not to be able to find 30 minutes a day. We could all probably survive with 30mins less sleep a night. So, 30 minutes per day = 182.5 hours or just over a week non-stop. Imagine what you could achieve if you worked for 7 days non-stop at something!

What is working smart?

Working smart, this is all about where you're putting your time in. You need to be putting your time until the places that make you money. For example, I used to spend 3 hours a day fulfilling orders, which is unskilled work. Working a 9-5, then gym 6-7, orders 7-10 this didn’t leave many hours for working on building/ scaling the business. So, I decided to employ my sister at £10/hr to do the orders for me. Boom! An extra 3 hours per day to spend on building the business and this started to pay off immediately. The point is, every now and again stop and look at how you're spending your time. If you're spending hours and hours building a website stop and think, is this really important? Can I get someone else to do it? Spend your time on what is going to make you money.

The bottomline.

You must do both, google the pareto rule. You may already know it by the 80/20 rule but basically it states that 80% of your results will come from working on the most important 20% of your goals. Find what that 20% is and put as many hours as you can afford into it. To avoid getting lost take time every week or month, make a list of everything you spend time on and review. Do this and you will become much more efficient and your results will sky rocket!

Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

JK