How the Smartest People Work

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”—Stephen Covey

Smart work is not about getting more things done, it's about getting the right things done.  It is not about being less industrious either. It is about making the best productive choices with regards to the use of our limited resources.  

Working smart is the way to increasing the impact of output from input. It involves making a premium profit from every investment of our energy. It is the path to making the most of precious resource of time.

If we want to operate at the highest level of contribution, we need to do more than just work hard, we need to apply certain skills to how we live and work. 

And that starts with living by right priorities as the legendary management coach, Stephen Covey advised leaders of companies and countries for a greater portion of his life. Covey taught the principle of always “putting the first things first.”

So, the solution to the issue of mediocrity that is widespread today is not to work harder and stay longer. Many active people are already working long hours without a corresponding rise in their records of achievements. 

Roger Delano, the author of ‘The Way Out Book’ highlighted this point when he stated: “One must, however, not just work hard. One must work smart. The efficient person gets the job done right; the effective person gets the right job done.”

While we may choose to think that exceptionally successful people are more naturally gifted than we are. The truth of the matter is necessarily not as many of us assume.

In reality, one key factor that is common to all truly great achievers is this: super-achievers are ‘knowledge workers’ in the true sense of the phrase. They don’t just work hard, they make the smartest possible decisions on the investment of their time and energy, every single day. 

This essential skill is conveyed in the words of the Persian poet, Rumi (RA) who asserted: “The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.” Knowing what to ignore comes from knowing that things don’t matter equally. One thing may be way more valuable than a dozen of others combined.  Highly effective people thoroughly comprehend this fact.

That simple point is the cornerstone of all extraordinary achievements in religion, business and in life. It entails focusing on what is most important, creating a system to tackle other critical goals and delegating or delaying everything else.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon Inc. contributes to this by saying that “one of the most important decisions you get to make in life.” is deciding on what you are going to do with your time and energy. This is all we need to understand to multiply any results in our lives.

Highly productive thinkers focus on just a few priorities and strategize to do them right. Focus is the defining element of ‘deep work.’ Deep work is the way to working smart. This is the secret of all super-successful people. They apply it in the areas that matter the most.

By now, I hope I have been able to convince you that getting better results in our business is less about hard work but more about smart work. We must be very selective in what we choose to do with our time and energy as the Eastern scholar, Jalaludeen Rumi (RA) completely agreed with the Western scholar, William James who contended that: 

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” As you can see, truth is indeed, incontrovertible. It is the same in the East and the West, in the North and the South: it is universal.

Now let’s put the theory into practice….

2 Simple Tips on How We Can Start Producing Highly

In his book, ‘Get Smart!’ the efficiency expert, Brian Tracy reveals some strategies of the best performers in a variety of professional fields. He introduces us to many ways we can do better with regards to how we live and work. Out of the book, I have extracted just two powerful ideas that we can use right away.

They are:

{1} Be clear: Have a clear sense of purpose on what you want and how it can generate superior value for you and the society.

{2} Be focused: Whatever you decide to do, concentrate on doing it with all the attention you can garner. Fiercely avoid interruptions when you’re doing your decisive tasks.

In a nutshell, if we desire maximum impact in any areas of our lives, we must make time to gain clarity on the direction we want to take and after that, we need to guard our time and attention from distractions, by all means.

Finally, if we decide to truly follow the best of what this article contains, we will literally astound ourselves because we can now produce as much as the most effective person alive.