From my previous blog posts, we have already talked about the old “work hard” paradigm and what it means to work smart.
And if you’ve been wondering how other people seem to know exactly what they want to get done, here’s a helpful work performance matrix from the book Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More by Morten T. Hansen:
Suppose you’ve worked with people who have no problems accepting more workload but end up coasting, underdelivering, and perhaps, not delivering anything. In that case, your experience working with them must have been frustrating.
But if you are that person, accepting more workload than you can carry, then coast, now you know how your colleagues feel about you.
However, there are others who, no matter how much effort they put into their work, end up being stressed because they don’t have the focus to finish one task at a time. Have you ever tried doing so many things at once and ended up finishing nothing at all?
If yes, then you are someone who do more then stress. A total opposite of those who do less and never stress, which is not even a good work performance to embody.
If you want to put your effort and focus the right way, the best route is to do less then obssess.
As Morten T. Hansen put it:
To work smart means to maximize the value of your work by selecting a few activities and applying intense targeted effort.
jessa 