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Smart Work

Tips on How to Work Smart

We live in a post-information age, where the future belongs to those who dare to be creative and innovative; people who follow environmental values of rapid technological development, increasing formal or informal education standing, tolerance, transparency and meaningful work. it has become clear that physical hard work is losing value due to the heightened respect for creativity; little wonder the increasing proliferation and universal acceptance of the knowledge-based economy. To work smart, you have to be smart. To create value in the creative society, your brain muscle must be as strong as possible; strong, not in the literal sense but you have to constantly train your brain muscle and challenge it to new levels; both the analytical and the creative part of your brain are very important.

Training your brain muscle doesn’t mean being only formally educated

Universities, slowly adaptable organizations, are unfortunately way behind market trends in most cases. Whether formal education makes sense completely depends from person to person (costs, desired occupation etc.), but no matter what you decide, the key thing is to get skilled up and acquire as much practical knowledge as possible.

Smart workers take really good care of their competences 

They read, develop street smarts and make sure they become extremely resourceful. They invest massively into developing useful and practical knowledge and abilities.

If you want to work smart, you should:

  • Acquire really good domain knowledge through formal or informal education.
  • Get the optimal formal level of education depending on your personality, resources and goals.
  • Don’t see formal education as just getting a paper but see your university as a center of knowledge and smart people; see it as an opportunity to build a strong network and to become an expert in a certain domain (this point is dear to my mentor).
  • Constantly train your creative mind by writing down ideas, art, music etc.
  • Train your analytical mind by doing mind-maps, analyzing different subjects etc.
  • Constantly read different things and try to connect them in new ways.
  • Become really good with technology.
  • Learn how to think for yourself and question everything.
  • Never stop acquiring knowledge and stay curious.
  • Know your tools and be good with technology. Technology is a big leverage to work smarter.

Developing the Smart Work mentality and capability requires that you develop the following skills;

Life Management Skills

Being intellectually skilful, educated, creative and innovative, is just part of the smart work equation; the second one having life management skills.

Having a general productive life will most certainly have this equation;

Intellect, creativity, innovative + Life management skills = Remarkably productive life.

Being smart and educated doesn’t correlate with making good life choices at all. Developing life management skills early in life does. You don’t learn life management skills in school. Not many people know how to work smart and how to manage their lives properly.

Time Management

Smart workers are very well aware that time is their most precious resource they have. They value their time the most in life. Thus smart workers learn how to manage their time wisely.

Here’s are some tips on how to manage your time so that you can work smarter:

  • Eliminate most distractions from your life so that you can work productively.
  • Learn how to deal with procrastination.
  • 20% of the most important tasks lead to 80% of progress. Focus on that 20%.
  • Don’t let urgent tasks get in the way of your important tasks.
  • Never spend your time on tasks that only give you a false feeling of productivity, like e-mails or meetings or social networking.
  • Don’t multitask, and have different to-do lists.
  • Manage your energy, not only your time, and know your limits.
  • Organize your environment so it supports your productivity (clean desk etc.).
  • Focus on solutions, not on problems.
  • Have a growth mindset and keep improving yourself.
  • Automate, delegate, outsource and optimize as much as possible.
  • Introduce a no-interruptions day into your life.

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