Outsourcing Services – Working Hard vs. Working Smart

Productivity is the name of the game in any industry. It’s about making the most out of your time, effort, and resources. Productivity is achieved both when you work hard and work smart. The only difference is the amount and quality of productivity achieved between these two techniques. Working hard makes you productive by finishing your required tasks. Working smart takes productivity a notch higher by allowing you to have more impact in your business by accomplishing selected tasks. Let’s break this down further.

Working Hard is going through a list while Working Smart is prioritizing what’s on the list.

With the many things you need to do, you need to get a clear picture of the tasks you have to accomplish for the day. Working hard means crossing out each task you have in that list. Working smart means looking at that list and see which ones need to be done now in terms of importance. Business owners and employees often get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work they need to finish every day. Work smart by ranking those tasks in order of significance. Resist the urge of seeing everything as urgent.

Working Hard is using all available resources while Working Smart is using resources wisely.

Working hard involves using all the tools at your disposal to make sure that you’re being efficient at what you do. In contrast, working smart is assessing what you have and putting those resources to a more efficient use. For example, you have an overworked marketing team with social media management being the task that eats up most of their time. You can tap outsourcing services for this, offload this task from your marketing department, and get an online assistant do this at a fraction of the cost. Your team can then focus on the things they need to do. It also spared you from hiring another employee who has a higher hourly rate and additional benefits.

Working Hard is doing it all while Working Smart is delegating some.

Most business owners and managers fall into the micro-management trap. They feel the need to be on top of everything. This type of management style will burn you out in no time. You may seem to be working hard but you are not working smart. You are being a jack of all trades, master of none instead of being a master of one. As a business leader you need to learn the art of delegating. There are things you can do but you don’t need to. In fact, somebody can do a better job on that. However, you are great at something and that is what you should focus on. May it be strategic planning, developing trainings, or business expansion, you will be working smart if you do these things more and macro-manage the rest of your departments.

Working smart doesn’t come naturally. We don’t usually pause and think about the things we do especially when it has already become a routine for us. Oftentimes, we just work, work, work until it’s time to go home. Good leaders finish tasks but great leaders make things happen. You need to learn the difference between accomplishing something and creating something. Working hard makes you task-oriented while working smart makes you goal-oriented. Productivity is not limited to finishing to-do lists, productivity is best realized when the end-product directly affects the overall success of your business.