Work Hard? Or Work Smart?

Work hard.... if you do not succeed,work harder...all of us have come across a lot of people who advice this. But this need not work always. I believe working smart pays you more rewards than working hard. Of course dedication is required, but more than that i opine that channelization is crucial to success. A man never reaches his destination if he does not know the path he has to travel.

By asking to work smart, i am not in anyway suggesting anyone to fall upon the short-cuts, simply because they never yield the desired result. Even if they yield, they dont last ( just like out thalaivar said, kashtapedama kadaikkarathu...). Smartness here simply means - knowing 'what you can do' and knowing 'what you do'.

Chanakya has said in Arthashashtra that it is smarter to battle against opponents who are meaner than you and not against those who are capable of destroying you. The real meaning behind these words are to make friends with those who are more powerful, gain knowledge and thereby you become more powerful.

Even the bravest of warriors will fail if he does not know when to retreat from the warfield. There is no point in believing that pushing a bit harder would yield you the result once you are convinced that the strategy need a re-thinking. This is what i precisely mean by saying 'working smart'.

Say a person has 4 choices to make. He does not know what would give him the best possible result. He uses a trial and error method and after a lot of strenuous exercises has found out the result. I agree he has worked hard. The decision would have been much easier if the same person had known what would not give him the best result as he could have arrived at the answer using an elimination method. For this he must know what should not be done. And you would agree that, most times, finding that out is much more easier in our lives - Work Smart