Smart work
162/300. Or hardwork?
I’ve heard alot about the topic of smart work. Doing smart work. Smart work over hard work. The themes go on and one and I may have even participated in a conversation or two.
However, I have been thinking about it. What exactly is smart work? And what exactly is hard work?
It think we mix up things often. Or better still we do not properly define the things
“Smart Working focuses on achieving better results with less friction. Instead of relying on long hours or repetitive effort, it prioritises the right environment, tools, and ways of working to deliver outcomes efficiently.” chrome.
Dictionary meaning of hard work, “Great deal or effort or endurance.”
Usually, when people say smart work they probably mean that less amount of effort or work is done which is not entirely wrong.
However, smart work cannot exist without hard work.
You can only effectively practice smart work if you’ve borne hard work. Smart work is not really a standalone like we make it out to be. Yes, you get things done with less friction, and less effort but you need to have exerted a certain level of effort to get there.
Get Favour Ugbor’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The most random example:
Consider the use of AI especially in the practice of writing. It’s smart work if you know how to use AI, optimize it, use it for work and get really good and better output. However, you will not be able to do that properly if you’ve not done the hard work first.
You can prompt AI and get a good content but if you have not done the hard work of knowing how to write by yourself, your smart work will only prepare you for unforseen doom. Someday you would be flagged for AI because you haven’t learned the hard work of writing, editing, and refining.
Of course, same AI can help you do all this but if you still do not have these knowledge how would you tell if it’s doing a good job?
I recently saw someone share one of her unhinged prompts to Claude and it was something in the lines of, “This content you just gave me now is it something you will be happy with if you were paying me a billion dollars for it? Please treat it seriously like I’m paying you a million dollars.” They were a few more in the comments.
Now if this person had no idea what real writing looks like, if they had not done the hard work of learning words (content), they’d probably take that content exactly like that and send it out, risking sounding like every other person.
If you will do smart work, you must have done the hard work. You have delegated most part of your job? There were certainly days you did everything.
You’ve outsourced your emails to an automation? There are definitely days you’d spent half your time on the emails.
Hard work comes before Smart work.
And sometimes smart work is really a product of a hard work, done well.
