Smart Work vs Hard Work. Which is better, which should be valued?

This question haunts every workplace, and successfully confuses everyone. There are camps and devotees of either side, and convenient converts depending on situation!

It is actually quite simple, if we see some facets clearly.

Before we proceed, let us first remove the common implicit assumption and confusion behind Smart work and Quantity of work. People who work less always refer to themselves as “smart work” people. You will never come across someone who works less, and who doesn’t say: “I work less hours because I do smart work. S/he works longer hours because s/he does dumb work”. Whoa! Hold your horses! You could work less and be dumb about it too. You could work more and be smart at it too. Quantity of work has nothing to do with whether it is smart or not! Let us not make an implicit assumption right under our noses. One is apples and the other is oranges.

Work can be: smart work or dumb work. Quality.
Work can be: less work, hard work or over-work. Quantity.

It should be mathematically obvious that total effectiveness is an output of how smart we are in that work (quality of work) and how much we work (quantity of work).

Result = Quality x Quantity.

However, Result = Quality x Quantity breaks down if quantity is above a certain threshold – which is different for different people. Someone could work 6 hours at a stretch, you may work 12 hours at a stretch. Thus, for one person 6 hours may be hard work, for another it may be 12 hours.

When we cross our own levels of hard work and enter the zone of over-work – that’s when things go wrong. Result = quantity x quality no longer holds true. Quantity rises arithmetically but Quality – both immediate and long-term – dips exponentially as you over-work more. You can see who overtakes whom when you enter deeper into over-work territory.

Now it becomes obvious what would be most valued. People may talk about work-life balance and “only smart work” but it is all jazz and being “politically correct”. Truth is that the following sequence is what gets you results.

1. Smart, hard work
2. Smart, less work
3. Dumb, hard work
4. Dumb, less work
5. Over-work

There, I said the unpopular but obvious thing: smart and hard work will always score over smart and less work! Of course, there is the complication of different levels of smart – how smart is smart? But smart being smart, hard work will score over less work.

You might be tempted to think that #3 may overtake #2 at times. But in intellectual fields, that never happens. Smart work, even if less, will have results better than dumb work. So my opinion is that the above order is fixed, and that dumb work cannot beat smart work even if there is lot of quantity of work.

If you work less but smart, very good, it is worthy of accolade and a touch of envy. But you are missing the fullness of your potential if you have not reached the comfortable limit of hard work for you. Does this mean you should or have to work hard? Not really. We have our own priorities and situations, and we need to choose.

But what our smart, less work approach definitely does not give us is the automatic right to put down someone else working hard – because that person may be working both smarter and more too! Hard work does not automatically mean dumb work – it could be both more and better!

Note that over-work does not have smart or dumb – it is always dumb.

From above, here are simple optimized rules in order of priority:

1. Never over-work
2. Work smart (your smartest!)
3. Work hard

Simple, right?