Of course, work hard Is necessary to achieve great achievements, although if that intensity joins to do it in an intelligent, much better way.
You may be a long time at work, doing thousands of things; This is often called hard work.
Although that does not mean that you will be more productive. You may be doing things wrong or doing them wrong.
Another case is if you are doing the right things, devoting enough time and doing everything with a high quality. You may be less time, but you are more productive. This is called working smart.
In my opinion there are two problems in these two ways of working:
- Working long is absurd if it is a poor job or causes you to have poor health.
- Working smart can be insufficient if you do not produce enough, if you do not meet deadlines or if your competitors beat you (even if they had worse quality).
In our Western culture there is a reverence for working hard. Particularly in Spain is the phenomenon of"presentism", which in reality is not related to productivity. Bosses believe that employees have to spend more time in the office, because"they will be working", although much of that time"only presence"is lost on the internet.
Nowadays, productivity is increasingly being given priority, and there are initiatives that encourage work-family reconciliation, although it is not enough. In addition, with the crisis, working conditions have worsened; They work many hours, outrageously badly paid and often do not charge overtime.
In my opinion, you have to get away from those kinds of jobs where people are treated badly and exploited. For me it is not worth that of"is that is what there is, there is no work". Perhaps, the best option would be to You risk a little And you're looking for something better.
Coming to the correct equation
Leaving aside the jobs that do not value you, you waste your time and therefore your life... I wonder... why do not we make a mixture of the two ways of working?
Doing it smart is important, but I think it's just part of the"equation." It is unlikely that anyone who has achieved a great achievement has done so only by working smart.
Einstein, Newton, Fleming, or Edison took thousands of hours studying and researching to reach their discoveries.
I already said it Thomas Edison himself
"There is no substitute for hard work.
"Genius consists of one percent of inspiration and ninety-nine percent of perspiration.
Of course, Edison worked smart, he was actually very smart - he went on to record 1000 inventions and was the forerunner of electric lighting in the streets.
There are many corporate presidents -CEOS- who claim to get up at 6:15 a.m. Or even work two hours after dinner. They say they sometimes work 18 hours a day. So here is the problem, there is a real conflict between life and work. If you work so hard, you will not have social or family life. Another thing is that that work is concentrated in a time of the year or by some event.
Tireless workers' cases
Do not kid yourself, big goals are hard to come by. In this world we are many millions of people and in whatever you want you will have to work hard.
If you want a job you will have to compete with hundreds of candidates, if you want a partner you will have to compete with other"competitors", if you want to win a marathon you will have to compete with hundreds of runners.
If you do not believe it, look at this data of some of the most successful people today and of history:
- Roger Federer, the best tennis player in history, trains 10 hours a day, reaching a few key weeks the 100 hours.
- The Beatles played from 1960 to 1964 over 10,000 hours in Hamburg, Germany.
- Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter said in an interview that he worked for 8-10 hours.
- Barack Obama, president of the United States, sleeps about 6 hours a day. He gets up at 7:00 a.m. And goes to bed at 1:00.
- Thomas Edison slept 3-4 hours each night.
- Benjamin Franklin slept 5 hours each night.
- Nikola Tesla slept 2 hours each night.
In these examples working more seems to have resulted in great achievements. But it's not always like this…
Cases of low productivity
According to European Comission , The productivity per hour in Germany exceeds 42 euros, while the Spanish one stays in 32 euros.
In Spain an average of 1780 hours per year is worked, a figure surpassed only by Japan (1790 hours), the United States (1800 hours) and South Korea (2100 hours). Spain has 68.5 points in productivity per hour worked, away from Germany (87.1) and the Eurozone (75.9).
Therefore, productivity does not depend on the number of hours worked, but on whether it has worked efficiently in those hours. Therefore, quality is more important than quality.
CONCLUSIONS
For me the conclusion is clear: yes, you want to achieve a complicated goal, it is necessary to work a lot but also intelligently.
He works a lot, smartly, productively and improving without stopping. The historical characters I mentioned before worked hard but also did it efficiently.
How to do it? The key is to maintain a level of persistence and focus attention on your goals as you learn and find new ways of doing things more efficiently, ie with the same investment of resources (time, money, energy, ) You get the same or better results.
On the other hand, although they are very important, for you to achieve great achievements, it will not be enough to work in one way or another. Other factors, such as your strategy, training, degree of risk, creativity, opportunities Or even luck .
And what do you think? Are you working hard or working smart?