As Henry David Thoreau says: “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?.”

There are many people in the world who work incredibly hard for minimal reward, they might work ten hours a day but if they only get minimum wage their life still sucks. Clever people know how to live a great life without being an incredibly hard worker.

Knowledge is more powerful than hard work.

A dumb man will spend all day pulling on the door handle of a locked door to try and break in, he will exert a massive amount of energy to no end. The smart man would pick up a crowbar, use it as a lever and open the door with the strength of a 5 year old. This example shows you the power of knowledge over brawn.

There are people in the world earning millions of dollars a year whilst working a few hours a day, they have set themselves up with a business that runs itself and they juts take the profits. Of course it would have taken time and resources to set up, but in the long run setting up that company allows them to spend a lot less of their life working. It was knowledge that allowed them to set up that company not hard work.

The people who win in life are not the people who work hardest, they are the people who work smartest.

How You Can Work Smart

1. Invest in your own knowledge. Every hour you spend investing in your own bank of knowledge is worth ten hours of hard work. If you had the brains of Richard Branson you would 100% become a billionaire, so what I don’t understand is why people work hard to become a billionaire. Don’t go out and try to get rich, become as smart as Richard Branson or Warren Buffet then you will easily become rich.

2. Plan your life. I recently watched Brian Tracy’s webinar on how to become successful, he said every minute spent planning is worth ten minutes of work. That is an example of working smart, people don’t plan because they think it takes up too much time but what they fail to realise is it is an investment which saves them time. It’s like the old story of the lumberjack that I recently heard: A man was sawing down a tree, he was sweating and panting but was continuing to work as hard as he could and yet the tree was hardly being sawn. Another man walked past and shouted over to him: “hey, that looks like hard work maybe you should sharpen your saw.” But the lumberjack didn’t take his advice, he just shouted back “I can’t, I’m too busy sawing this tree.”

3. Be an investor in everything. Spend money making yourself better, use the resources you have to enhance your life don’t hoard your money or assets. You will be better off spending two years building a successful website and then living of the revenuer for the rest of your life than working in your local shop for 8 hours a day. It may be the same amount of work but the rewards of one far outweighs the other. So when you do something never think about the immediate effect like the wage packet at the end of the month, think about the long term effect. How will your life be bette in one year, 5 years or ten years by the actions you are taking today?

Image credit:edited from Jarle Naustvik Flickr