“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.
