Don’t Work Hard, Work Smart

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
 — Abraham Lincoln

Here is a short summary of the American dream: If you have a dream and you work like a dog and stop at nothing to make that dream come true, it will come true. America is the land of opportunity, and here, your fate is under your control.

It’s popular right now to say “our lives are subject to countless outside forces that determine our fate” and “you can’t pick where you end up in life” and even “the American dream is dead,” but I don’t think any of that is true. In America, we can determine our own fate.

The reason so many people have so much difficulty achieving their dreams is not that it can’t be done, but that you’ve been misled as to how.

According to the traditional American dream, hard work is the key to success. But — and that’s a big but — hard work isn’t the only key to success. Hard work is necessary for success for sure, but it’s not sufficient. And no, the other key isn’t “daddy’s money” or “lucky breaks.” The other key is to work smart.

What “Working Smart” Means

Most people in America know what hard work is like. A day spent working in a factory, containing your anger while serving entitled restaurant customers, or stocking grocery store shelves is a day spent working hard. People in these professions spend their entire lives working hard, but their dreams don’t come true.

Smart work is different. A student born on the wrong side of the tracks who studies every day after school and uses free online learning resources like khan academy to educate himself to get scholarship admission to Harvard is working smart. An aspiring engineer who comes home after work every day to use codeacademy.com to teach herself Java and Python and eventually gets a job coding Java for twice what she used to make is working smart.

The people in both scenarios are working hard. You might say the minimum wage employees are working harder because they’re on their feet and working all day, you might say the students are working harder because they’re not getting paid, but we can all agree that they are both working pretty hard. But only one of these groups gets to see their dreams come true.

This isn’t merely some academic principle I came up with for this article. This is reflected in real life. When we look at successful people, we see not only a dogged work ethic, but a strategic approach to their decision-making in life. Tiger Woods worked hard for his world-class golf swing, but he also strategically moved to places where the best golf teachers, best golf courses and longest golf seasons were. Jennifer Lawrence worked hard to become one of the world’s best actresses, but she also moved from Indian Hills, Kentucky to Los Angeles, a city where people looking for the world’s best actress are.

In my day-to-day life, I see a lot of people who are not working smart. I know frustrated post-grads who apply for jobs before making sure their resume and LinkedIn profile look professional so they don’t scare away potential employers. I know lonely single people who spend hours per day swiping through dating apps and not a single hour per month working on their mind, body, or personality. I know new entrepreneurs who found startups without reading even a single book about what it takes for a new company to succeed. Most people, most of the time, do not work smart.

How To Work Smart

The “how” of working smart is actually pretty simple. Identify your desired outcome, and then put yourself in situations where your desired outcome is most likely to come about.

For example, let’s say you are a nine-year-old who wants to sell lemonade so you can buy a new Switch game. You could set your lemonade stand up in the cul-de-sac where your parents live, and wait outside all day only to sell a few cups of lemonade. Or, you could set your lemonade stand up at the local park, and sell out within two hours. That would be working smart.

A more adult example is the dream of becoming an actor. If you want to become an actor, you could stay in Indiana Hills, Kentucky, and just hope a notable director or agent or someone important will pass through. Or, you could move to Los Angeles and take acting classes and ready yourself for the moment you meet an influencer in the industry, which is much more likely to happen in Los Angeles than in Indiana Hills.

Think about what your dreams are. What can you do that makes your dreams more likely to come true? Do you need to move somewhere that has opportunities? Do you need to learn a hard skill like programming? What single thing can you do to dramatically raise the chances of your dreams coming true? Figure out what it is, and do that.

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