Should We Have a "Work Hard" or "Work Smart" Mindset?

If I had to choose, I would choose both, but lean slightly towards working hard.

Working hard gives us perseverance and resilience. Perseverance and resilience are always two essential qualities for anyone who wants to achieve great rewards in life. Needless to say, we can easily find examples of success achieved through perseverance in life.

Working smart acts like leverage in life. If you only work hard without working smart, you will forever play the role of a strong ox plowing fields for others. Conversely, if you only work smart without working hard, you will forever be a monkey jumping from branch to branch to spot great opportunities but never having enough perseverance to reap the great rewards from those opportunities.

In philosophical terms, working hard can be viewed as quantity , while working smart can be viewed as quality . When enough quantity has accumulated, a transformation in quality takes place. Only when you work hard enough will you gain the knowledge and experience needed to work smart.

If you are someone who constantly complains about not being as smart or clever as others, before judging your own brain, look back and ask yourself whether you have worked as hard as they have.

Here are a few quotes I find insightful on this topic:

"An ambitious genius who refuses to sweat is just a failure, unlikely to build anything sustainable. I have never seen a successful entrepreneur who works only 40 hours a week. The formula applied to them is 24/7, because even when an entrepreneur sleeps, they dream about business."

- Dr. Alan Phan -

"You don't have to be brilliant, only slightly smarter than average for a long, long time."

- Charlie Munger -

* Images in this article are sourced from Flaticon

Thank you for reading my article!

Kim,