What is Smart work — An Entrepreneur’s attempt to define it
One of the frequent advice we all hear is “Do smart work”.
Great advice!
I like it. And I want to implement it.
But the question is “How to do smart work?”
And the answer to this question is subjective.
When people say “Smart work”, I used to perceive it as an advice to do some jugaad(Indian name for frugal Innovation) or some compromise to get things done. Or figure out ways to push away things from your table. And so I never believed in the advice. Again, this is my perception.
So many folks use the word “smart work” and give the said advice. So smart work seems to be real!
But what the heck is Smart work, what does the word mean?
In this post, I am making an attempt to define smart work.
And why am I doing that?
To simply ensure that useful advises like this one do not fall through the crack just because there is a gap between the meaning of the advice(as per the giver) and the perception of the advice(as per the receiver).
The foundation of this post is laid by my own experiences and certain learning I captured from reading books, watching video and meeting people.
What is Smart work?
I got some sense of the meaning of smart work during the last year or so. Or to put it differently I was forced to think about smart work. Simply, because when you are an entrepreneur and bootstrapping your start-up, you want to ensure optimal usage of the resources.
We are interested in doing Smart work because we have set certain goals and we want to achieve them.
To achieve goals, we have to take action. And the action should be performed to the best of ones capabilities.
The capabilities we are talking about are
Physical capabilities
Mental capabilities
Financial capabilities
So if Smart work is something that aids in achieving goals and being successful, it must be something which will get you in a state when all these 3 capabilities are in sync and you are in a state of top productivity. Isnt it?
By this notion, if you are doing smart work, you are at the top of your game.
Thinking deeper, another question arises, how you get into this state? How you get into a state where all your capabilities are in sync you are performing to the best of your capabilities.
My answer to this question is simple — Being Conscious.
I have experienced that when I was clearly aware of why I was doing something, when I was conscious of what I was doing and why I was doing, I have performed at my full potential.
And I believe there is a strong reason for that.
Most of the times, we are doing things out of compulsion. Either our boss wants us to do something, or the society norms force us to take up certain things or may be the circumstances are forcing. So we are taking action, but it is a reluctant action.
And this reluctance stops your energies from being in sync.
By simply being aware of the situation, the compulsions and being conscious of the reasons why we are doing something and what are we doing, we throw away this reluctance.
And thus we create an opportunity for the energies to be in sync.
There are some compulsions we can run away from. But in some cases we do not have a choice. We have to fulfill the compulsion.
By simply being conscious of the compulsions, the reasons and the action that we need to take, we can perform the actions at our best.
We can conclude this post by defining
- Smart work as a state of top productivity and
- The best way to do Smart work is to be conscious of the action we are performing and reasons for the action.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Do share your feedback.
I wish all of us will be experts in Smart work.
Happy smart working !!!
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
