FROM PAPER TO NEWSPAPER
Years ago, I wrote an article for The Manila Times entitled ‘Work Hard or Smart – Where do we start?’ That newspaper article started out as a paper for my strategic management class. We were asked to create a framework on any topic we preferred, and I settled on a matrix that puts together ‘working hard’ and ‘working smart’ as a quadrant that classifes work effort.
The branding side of me called it ‘wEQ’ (pronounced like ‘EQ’ but ‘WE’ instead of ‘E’ and the ‘Q’ stands for Quadrant rather than Quotient — I’m sure you get the idea) although I never referred to it as such in my paper. Upon reading my submission, our professor advised me to send it to the column editor (a fellow faculty member) for possible publication. I did, it was published the following month and it kinda started my affinity for writing ever since.
The newspaper article however was limited to text and so I wasn’t exactly able to share the matrix — the article that was published was rewritten as a progression of advices from my (policeman) grandfather who always emphasized working hard, to my (doctor) father who always espoused working smart. It’s a very simple proposition — the old way was to put in the work while the new way is to look for work arounds.
STILL RELEVANT TODAY
The article culminated with an advice to my son to combine both, and work hard and smart to stay relevant in the future. Fast forward to today, and that advice is as relevant as ever given the highly competitive and disruptive nature of the world as we now know it. And since the Peope in Asia platform isn’t limited to text — I now have the opportunity to share with you the matrix I crafted back in the day.
The lower-right quadrant represents the ‘quadrant of futility’ — You do not work hard nor smart. You don’t put in the effort and does not even think of how to improve on your tasks. It’s kinda like drifting. Going with the flow and not really knowing where to go. Avoid this at all cost and steer clear of people who have this mentality.
Working hard may be effective in the beginning and the feeling of being tremendously busy might be a attractive for some poeple. However, relying on hardwork alone will not help your longevity as this would defnitely lead to burnout in the long term. Thus, if you just focus on working hard then you are at risk of being trapped in the ‘burnout quadrant’.
It used to be that working smart was about streamlining processes, delegating effectively and sometimes even using shortcuts. Today working smart is mainly perceived as using technology for automation and digitization. People that mainly work smart live relatively low-stress, comfortable lives. Nothing wrong with that and in fact, most of us want that and for a lot of individuals – that is the ultimate goal. The trap however lies in being too comfortable that you forget to stretch yourself and strive to be better at what you do. You become detached from progress and more dangerously, even detached from people. So be wary not to get caught in the ‘quadrant of detachment’.
The ‘sweet spot’ remains to be the discipline of consistently putting in work, along with the critical insight of how to improve processes, and use technology to scale what you do. I refer to this quadrant as the ‘quadrant of sustainable productivity’. This does not mean that you don’t have any downtime — part of smart work is taking time away to recharge but not getting ‘carried away’ and still have the itch to come back and work hard.
At the end of the day — Working Hard and Working Smart will always be a Work-In-Progress, so don’ let it become something that you overthink or overdo. Cheers!
