Re: Working smart vs working hard

Many people say that you should work hard if you want to succeed in life and rise to riches. I'd rather say that working hard will only make your boss richer, not yourself. On the other hand, there is an age-old adage which says that you should be working smarter, not harder. But working smarter is a vague idea, and I'm interested to hear what people have to say on this topic. As far as I'm concerned, I think that working smart comes down to creating environment where you will have more chances to meet Lady Luck smiling at you, where you will be able to hit a lucky strike because luck plays an ever-important role in our lives. For example, if you want to find a date to have a romantic relationship with or you are looking for a one-night stand only, you will go to a beach or a bar since your chances are higher there, right? The same approach seems to be applicable to work as well. In other words, stick around the places where your chances of success are the highest.

So share your opinions here, guys. What is your practical take on working smart?

You have a point man. Actually I have been hearing this sort of argument even when I was still a child. My father will always tell us to work smart, and make money out of money. And when I grow up, I did work hard, but I later realized that I don't want to be worker that long. I need something to help me became financial stable in the future. So I decided to quit my job, put my offline business. Although I still need to wake up early and oversee everything, I did enjoy what I'm doing and the best thing, I'm the boss. LOL. But there's some kind of element in luck as well. I don't know but I felt that I'm just lucky because suddenly I gain financial freedom and then when I discovered bitcoin, it give me another leeway, more funds for me to channel to my business. So I say that you have to make the right decision + element of luck = success in your life. You have to be in the right place at the right time.

I think you can see those type of similarities in any "evolutionary-like" system that promotes winners and unfortunately makes it tougher for losers. Capitalism tends to favor and reward people who work hard, but you have to at least acknowledge that certain people have a substantial head start in life compared to others, which makes it almost impossible for others (off spring of 'loser' families) to do anything but "work hard" and are simply too tired to find clever ways to "work smart" instead.

This is one of the best posts I've seen in this topic.

I should say that you have made a very clever observation. I think I should expand on it a little bit further here. The "loser" families are set to produce more losers on average and not because they lack something in their genes (they don't). Rather, they lack in their mentality. When you are raised in a distressing environment, mostly psychological in nature, as opposed to physical (which is not as bad), you won't be able to get out of the limits imposed on you by your upbringing. You are "too tired" because you have been fed up with grim prospects of the future and overall pessimistic outlook since your early childhood (actually, from the cradle), and your thinking itself is depressed and constrained. But when you are depressed, both mentally and psychologically (there's a subtle difference), your only option is to work hard if you don't want to end up under the bridge.

Quote from: chennan on March 16, 2018, 03:14:13 PM

That's why you see trends over family generations of people staying in the same socio-economic class. Rich people tend to stay rich and vice-versa... sure. But there is also those rare outliers of people who work their way up in life by figuring out that balance of getting lucky while rigorously working in a much more smarter way.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort and awareness to break out of this loop and change your life dramatically to the better.