Often I hear people arguing about the need to either work hard or work smart and personally, I am of the opinion that we should work hard in a smart way but then I really do not know much about most of these things so I just had to make a little bit more research on the difference between working hard and working smart and I actually think I have learnt a little lesson that I can share also.
I am not a good story teller but I will like to drive home my point by sharing a very simple story in this post, there was a farmer in a local village who usually cultivated his farm land on a plot of land he had acquired as a family inheritance, he was able to farm what he could consume and since it was impossible for him to cultivate every food product he needed on his farmland, he was often living a miserable life where he will need to beg another farmer if he will be given a little portion of another farm produce in exchange for what he had.
He rarely had any cash for purchasing products that were going to be required to meet his needs, every day he had to wait on villagers who he hoped will need the little product he got from his farm in exchange for some little cash. The work that this farmer was putting into the farm was not in any way equivalent to what he was getting and he was really tired of living that type of life and was really confused about what to do.
He decided to speak with a friend who was also living a similar miserable life like his own, he asked him if they could combine their available farm equipment’s together and come up with an idea of producing one product in a larger quantity and together they can work on trying to sell these farm products and have a better method to earn. The friend was very happy with the idea and they set to work immediately and in no time they began to get little amount that was enough to help them improve their standard of living.
Soon enough, they got five other people who were not farmers but were willing to make investment in the business, they used the money to get a very large piece of land and some basic farm implements different from the old traditional ones they were used to, within a few moment of consistent work they started to employ more hands to help them with the large scale of work made available.
To me, this is a good way to explain smart and hard work principle, these two farmers did not stop putting in their skill to work as they continued to look for better ways to get better at what they were doing. Smartness is about looking for a better way to get things done and working hard is showing up to get the smart work perform really well.