Work Smarter Not Harder

Have you ever heard someone in management say this?

I have.

Every time I hear it I have to stop from rolling my eyes. I think it is one of the most ridiculous things you can say to a workforce that is being asked to do more with less. For some reason we accept completely illogical ideas professionally. If we were asked to apply the same idea personally, we wouldn’t even give it a thought.

Here is my issue with the work smarter not harder. We do not work smart at all. Most companies are not even remotely set up for intelligent workflow. We have heavily guarded silos, self-imposed bottlenecks, politics, and a myriad of social issues. We are not hard-wired to work smart.

So, how do we work smarter? We don’t. We say we are working smarter while we work much harder. Our hours are longer, our personal time shorter. As we burn ourselves out, we smile and say “Work smarter, not harder!”

If we were working smarter, we would be working less. Our work weeks should shorten to 35 hours. Our vacation time should increase.

I am not working smarter, I am working hard. From time to time, I recalibrate and make sure that my priorities are aligned. I hope one day we all can worker smarter. We might live longer too!