work harder, not smarter

Summary

work smarter not harder. coined in the 1930s by Alan F. Morgenstern. nearly a hundred years later people are still saying it while drowning in easy buttons. I’m here to argue you need to work harder. and harder means more attempts, not more hours.

1. if you carry one mulch bag at a time when a wheelbarrow exists, sure, get smarter. that’s most of what the phrase means in the literal sense. but today the world has done most of the smart work for you. Walmart delivers groceries. ChatGPT writes your first draft. Siri runs your lights. a supercomputer in your pocket thinks for you.

2. if you’re at average intelligence or above, you’re already working smart enough. you don’t need another efficiency hack. you need more attempts. that’s the part most people who hide behind work smarter are skipping.

3. the 80 20 rule. Pareto noticed 20% of his plants bore 80% of the fruit. people now use it as a focus tool. focus on the 20% that matters. fine. except you can’t know what the 20% is until you’ve done the 100. you have to try everything first to know which 20% is the actual lever.

4. so when you start, you don’t get efficiency. you get effort and lots of attempts. then after the 100 you can pick the 20 that worked and double down. efficiency has to be earned. it doesn’t show up for the lazy.

5. if you only have two hours today, still try harder in those two hours. talent is built through persistence. Calvin Coolidge said it best. nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. talent will not. genius will not. education will not. the slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. try harder.

Transcript

where work smarter not harder came from

Now, we are getting more efficient, but efficiency has to be earned, and it has to be earned through hard work, by attempts, by a lot of attempts. The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself.

This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey. So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Work smarter, not harder. You’ve heard it before, right? Work smarter, not harder.

You hear it all the time. I’m here to challenge that notion. I think you need to start working harder and not smarter. And harder doesn’t mean longer. Harder means harder, means more effort, more attempts. So a walk down the history of this work smarter, not harder, it was originally started in 1930s by a guy named Alan F. Morgenstern.

He was an industrial engineer and the creator of the Work Simplification Program. And he coined the term, work smarter, not harder. And somehow, we are nearly 100 years since the creation, inception of this term and we are still using the phrase. Even though the world has gotten incredibly smart, like the smartest we’ve ever been and people are still saying this, Walmart or Whole Foods will deliver your groceries, DoorDash has got your dinner covered, Alexa, Siri and Google can answer any question you have.

They can turn off your lights and remind you to take your medicine. Furthermore, technology like ChatGPT is about to replace you in your job and eventually it will replace your brain. Hell, you even have a supercomputer in your pocket that does most of your thinking for you. So how smart do we need to get?

we’re already smart enough

Like, what is smart enough to where we can stop working hard? I do get the fact that in manual labor sometimes, if you’re being dumb, you need to work smarter, not harder. An example I like to use is if I have 20 bags of mulch in my front yard and I’m carrying them to my backyard and I carry them one at a time on my shoulder versus loading them all in a wheelbarrow, it would be better to load them all in a wheelbarrow.

I could make the argument that it’s more fitness, more work, it’s better for me to go one at a time, but I still have the work that the mulch requires anyway. So yes, sometimes you just need to not be an idiot and work smarter, not harder. But most of the time, these days, that is not the case. There’s too much easy in the world.

There are too many easy buttons that you can hit. So my argument is that if you are, let’s just say, at an average level of intelligence, if you are okay with saying, you know what, I’m probably at least average intelligence compared to most people in the world, or you would go one step further to say you are above average intelligence, you’re probably already working smart enough.

We don’t really need to hit on this work smarter thing with you, okay? You’re already doing it. But are you working harder? You know, the next path this leads us down is the Pareto principle, and this was developed by an Italian economist in 1896. You’ve heard of the 80-20 rule, Filfredo Pareto, the 80-20% rule.

He witnessed it happening, he witnessed it with his plants, 20% of his plants were bearing 80% of the fruit. In Italy, he observed that 20% of the wealth was, or 80% of the wealth was held by 20% of the people who lived there. And now it’s become like an efficiency principle, right? It’s an efficiency principle.

the 80 20 rule needs the 100 first

A lot of people like to focus on and act like it’s a secret to something. It’s a secret to efficiency. Just focus on the 20%, the most effective 20%. That’s what you need to do in your work, in your life. Just focus on that 20 and you’re going to be okay. But guess what? There is no 20% effort or focus if you haven’t done the 100.

Does that make sense? If you have not done all the things that would now equate to 100%, you can’t cut that down to 20. You can’t focus on the 20 until you’ve done the 100. So when we get to your work life or your personal life and you’re trying to be more efficient, you have to start by trying everything.

If you want to be successful, you have to try everything. You have to do all the different things. You just have to try hard, more effort, more attempts, more, more, more, more. That’s what you have to do. Then after you’ve done all that and you have 100%, you’re like, okay, that is everything. Now you can go down to trying to be more efficient and say, hey, I have done these 40 different things and only eight of them work.

Here are the eight that I’m going to focus on. Now we are getting more efficient, but efficiency has to be earned and it has to be earned through hard work by attempts, by a lot of attempts. So I’m hoping that makes sense. You have to work harder and with no intelligence, with no smarter behind it, it’s like, I don’t know.

I don’t know how it’s going to work, so I’m going to try a lot of different things until something works. That’s working harder. There’s no smarter to that. You can take your best attempt at every single one of those and that could be the working smarter element to this, but still at the end of the day, you have to try a lot of different crap in business.

efficiency has to be earned

If you want it to grow in your health, you have to try so many different things. What diet works for you? What doesn’t work for you? What foods are good for you? What foods are bad for you? There’s no one diet that you can go hop on and that’s it. There’s only the one that works for you. So you have to go do a lot of trial and error.

You have to do the hundred before you can find the 20 same with growing your business. You can try all these different marketing campaigns, but eventually you have to try so many that you’re going to find out, Oh, these types of campaigns work, but it’s not until you’ve tried them all that you actually know when you’re getting more efficient.

When you stop trying to focus on working smarter and you actually say, okay, you know what? I’m just going to go all in with effort and intensity. I’m going to work harder than everyone else. Now I can back it down to something else. Efficiency is earned. Effort and trying hard are muscles that need to be worked.

And when you stop working your grit, it goes away. You start to find yourself being lazy in very common everyday life activities. You have to continue to try hard and put in the effort or those things will atrophy. So stop hiding behind this. I am going to work smarter, not harder. When in reality, you might just be lazy.

press on

When you’re saying that nine times out of 10, when I hear that, it’s a, it’s a laziness, laziness type comical gesture, right? It’s like, yeah, I’m working smarter, not harder. Yeah. Okay. We get it. But these things that you want in your life take effort. And I’m saying all of these things to me, hopefully you can get something out of it too.

This podcast is about a documentation. I have to constantly remind myself in work myself into the position that I want to be. I have to continue to work harder. Work life balance. Great. Yes. Focus on it. But when you’re here, when you’re doing the work, when you’re doing the thing effort intensity, if you only have two hours to work today, still try hard, try harder in those two hours.

Talent is built through trying hard and persistence. And I’ll end with my favorite quote by Calvin Coolidge. And he said, nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts and persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.