Working Smarter, Not Harder

Listen to the audio version of this text.

Ever heard this one?

It's a shortcut to efficiency that sounds almost too good to be true. After all, working hard is unavoidably a big ask of dedication, time and substantial effort. Being able to bypass such a large investment of energy is an attractive idea!

At the same time, our conscience correctly warns us to not trust easy-sounding shortcuts so blindly.

Let's take a step back and look at this philosophy from a different perspective.

Deciding what to spend your limited time on is a critically important part of your project. The guiding power of minimalism is a great friend to have when making these decisions.

Making firm, confident choices made early on means less micro-level decision-making down the line. Your mind will naturally be drawn to the few elements that you have kept when you have less clutter laying around. Then, in search of stimulation, you will use these carefully selected elements to the fullest.

There will almost certainly be fewer issues, fewer interruptions and a whole lot less effort on your part if you favor minimalism in your approach.

This requires a bit of boldness to execute.

I would argue that it's quite hard to put smart approaches into actual practice without a strong dose of confidence and taking initiative.

Indeed, it is often the case that smart, forward-thinking ideas bounce around in our heads privately, all the while we work needlessly hard on tasks because we are too concerned to actually implement our improvements.

Minimalism isn't just about working with a smaller amount of elements. It's about making strong, clear decisions about those elements before putting effort into anything else.

This way the natural repetitive nature of your work means that you will keep repeating these strong decisions we were talking about before, instead of the inefficient routines built on indecision and uncertainty.

It is quite the literal switch from working hard to working smart.