Hard Work or Smart Work: What Helps?

This is a regular debate among people across all walks of life as to whether either of them is relevant or both. This question also undermines the relevance of various quotes which convey in essence that Hard Work makes you lucky or hard work guarantees success.

However, it is but obvious that both is essential as Smart Work helps you zero in on the right strategy to work while hard work helps you implement the same in the right way to get through your output. This also proves that both cannot be mutually exclusive. This most discussed topic is also the most discussed in a lot of Group Discussions and Personal Interview Rounds conducted in the case of MBA exams like the Xat Selection Procedure.

Smart Work helps you to manage your time well. So, next time someone tells you about smart work, do not think that it is a shortcut or something that requires lesser effort, it is the search for the right way to do things. The concept of working smart also let you be goal oriented and output focused. This ideology also makes you think out of the box and come up with innovative strategies that no one has thought of. Adopting this guarantees more recognition and promotion in career opportunities.

Also, a majority of the crowd thinks that Hard work never gets the credit it deserves. However, that is not true. It does take time but once it gets noticed, it stays in memory for a very long time. Hard Work is right when there is a spirit of determination and not giving up attitude, but it must be in the right direction. As efforts alone put, with the right spirit and with no perspective of the goal may not guarantee a candidate complete success. Hard Work with Smart Work is also essential as quite a lot of time, there can be setbacks or minor pushes in the efforts that are being put. Smart Work helps you identify the same and address them to the extent of solving them and turning tables around. Hard Work followed by Smart Work here makes you efficient and effective.

Smart Work brings in sincerity, diligence, proactiveness and a sense of ownership in whatever you do. It also helps you prioritize important things. This also brings to perspective that in most of the cases, hard work begins where smart work ends. Hard work in this context would mean execution of the procedure to achieve goals once smart work has determined the right way and resources to do it.

Hard Work also may guarantee success and timely completion, but building relationships with seniors at work and falling into their good books is also one aspect that cannot be undermined. An MBA graduate needs to have this balance to strike chord with achieving deadlines as well as building good relationships at work.

What if you don’t possess talent for a job? Does Smart work help there? No. Only Hard Work would help you get through the minute details to do the same well and also get through the errors and mistakes that you make. In this case, to be a smart worker, you have to work hard to imbibe the skill and thinking approach to take the right decision.

Shreyansh is a writer and blogger who writes Education related content. He believes that educational reformation is inevitable for Human Development and growth.