4 Practices to Work Smarter
We‘ve all heard “work smart, not hard.” But who wants to work dumb? See 4 smart work practices, why we don’t do them, and how to fix it.
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Concept Summary
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“Work smarter, not harder.”
We all have heard this age-old adage. At the first order, it makes sense — we all naturally want to preserve energy. Why do things the hard way?
But as I grew older, something about this adage just didn’t sit right. One question sticks out: if that’s so intuitive, why don’t people do it? After all, who wants to work dumb? Who wants to go home well after midnight, day in and day out?
In his book Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More, Professor Morten Hansen explores what things top performers do that makes their performance stand out through statistical analysis on a survey of ~5,000 people across industries, seniority, and experience.
He arrived at seven practices, four of which are things you can do personally, which we will focus on for this feature. They are…
1. Do Less, Then Obsess
Multitasking doesn’t work. While the image of the high-powered businessperson doing five tasks at the same time seems impressive, in reality those tasks don’t happen simultaneously. Instead, we switch between tasks rapidly (seriously, try observing yourself the next time you try to multi-task).
This rapid switches incur all sorts of costs, from attentiveness, information-processing effectiveness, and peace of mind. The science is clear, though the fact that it still shows up in job interviews as a strength speaks to how ingrained this practice is.
Prof. Hansen found that great performers are selective in the tasks they take up, and then they obsess to deliver exceptional value in those.
Why don’t people do it? How can we overcome them?
There are 3 common reasons:
First is the sense of comfort. There’s some sense of safety in doing multiple projects because it means we maintain options — we don’t ‘close doors’. The first step to combat this is to realize that that optionality comes with a cost, in your output quality, time, or effort. Once we understand that often-missing piece, wield the ‘razor’. Take a hard look of the costs and benefits of what’s on our plate, and use the principle of “as few as you can, as many as you must.”
Second, temptations and distractions. Colleagues popping up on your station. Email notifications. That suspiciously tailored push ad from Amazon.
Every day we are faced with countless distractions of various kinds. We can minimize these by first cataloguing them: which distractions occur most frequently? Which of them am I most susceptible to? Then, design and set clear rules ahead of time. This can range from as small as not looking at email and social media for 1 hour, to a public announcement that your company is only going to engage with a smaller subset of projects in areas you have really deep expertise in.
Third, and most cited, is a lack of direction from higher-ups. This is the trickiest to navigate, because it involves tact. It is important to first cover our base: make it clear that we aren’t pushing back to slack off — remember that the second part of the principle is ‘then obsess’. We need to deliver exceptional work. This also makes it clear that lack of focus comes at the cost of quality. It is helpful of course if we have established a pattern of this in your previous work. Then, we can start the conversations on prioritization. Come up with a proposal and rationales, then put it back in the boss’ shoulders.
2. Redesign Your Work Around Value
Too many of us are target-fixated on the wrong goals. I need to submit these reports. We need to teach in the classroom for this many hours. I need to land this many clients.
While some of those activities may be needed for sure, how often do we pause and ask “is there a better way?”. Prof. Hansen argues that we need to push ourselves to understand what value we bring, and redesign activities to achieve them.
Which parts of the report are most critical for the user’s decision-making? Are students receptive to this mode of learning or are there other ways we can maximize their learning outcomes? Which clients would benefit most from support at this time and will what we offer deliver it to them?
Why don’t people do it? How can we overcome them?
The book discussed two common reasons:
First, poor metrics. People get rewarded by metrics that equate volume of activity with accomplishments. Outcome-based metrics as well as organization-wide metrics can alleviate this issue. While it is on the leaders to set the right metrics, it doesn’t mean that juniors cannot influence this. Push to understand what value are we creating. Hunt for pain points, and ask stupid questions. We can then advocate how the redesign proposal brings value to the organization.
Second, proposing and enacting big changes is a daunting prospect. As much as everyone touts how “because that’s the way it’s always been done” is not a good answer, few wouldn’t balk at the notion of ‘rocking the boat’. After all, what if we got it wrong and the redesign fails?
There are three ways to alleviate this: have a thorough understanding of the value we provide and center the redesign around that, remember that small changes can have big impact (e.g., saving 5 seconds per product you manufacture millions of can add up fast), and implement change incrementally — experiment, test, and pilot fast before enacting sweeping changes.
3. Use Deliberate Practice, Not Just Rote Repetition
“Practice for 10,000 hours and you’ll become an expert.” We’ve all heard this sentence, it seems simple, yet it’s misleading. It’s not the act of doing that makes us better — it’s deliberate, micro-improvements in every rep we do.
Sports is an easy way to visualize this (“focus on keeping midfoot strikes next run. Rotate your hips a bit more next throw. Place your feet an bit wider next punch.”), but this also easily applies in office situations (“project your voice stronger next presentation. Send a sharper agenda before next meeting. Focus on the key messages and de-clutter your next slides.”)
Why don’t people do it? How can we overcome them?
No time. We are so busy with day-to-day work that thinking about improvement daily seems like an impossible task. This attitude is even reflected organization-wide; think about the norm of doing performance reviews annually. That wouldn’t hold in sports.
The book offers three ways to combat this. First, in every repetition, pick one and only one skill you want to work on. This scoping enables you to even reflect on improvements you can do in 15 minutes every day. Second, solicit instant, micro-feedbacks. It can be as simple as asking your manager for quick inputs after a presentation, or texting colleagues “I’m working on my structured communication skills. Any quick observations from the meeting we just had?” Lastly, find ways to measure your progress, even the “soft” ones, such as a checklist of whether you’ve followed all the meeting facilitation best-practices in today’s meeting.
4. Find Passion and Purpose in Your Work
This is pretty self-explanatory. If we get excitement from our work (passion) and we feel that we’re contributing to something bigger than ourselves (purpose), we are much more likely to approach our work with intensity. As the book puts it, it’s not about the number of hours we work (in fact performance flattens after 50 hours per week, and declines after 65 hours per week), but it’s about the energy we put in per hour of work.
Why don’t people do it? How can we overcome them?
Not every job is infused with passion and purpose — some people are just stuck in mundane jobs because, hey, a person’s gotta eat, right?
Prof. Hansen’s advice here is basically to adopt a broader view of passion and purpose more broadly.
On the subject of passion, we should understand what excites us about the job in broad terms. As in, not as narrow as “I enjoy making music” or “I really like rock climbing.” It’s things like “excitement of succeeding” or “ability to create something” or “interacting with others”. We can then seek new roles within or outside of our current job. For example, if interacting with people excites you, maybe get on a project that requires customer discovery.
On the subject of purpose, the book offers the concept of the Purpose Pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid is the type of work with strong innate purpose. Think about the EMTs and firefighters and vaccine developers.
But though that top is a small subset of jobs in the world and not everyone can be there, at the the much broader base we can still start with understanding what basic value our work brings to the world. Simply put, if someone wants to buy your product, it’s a good indication that it holds some sort of value (hey, cars help people get around). An interesting concept here is that doing no harm can be a value in itself — don’t push products people don’t need if you’re a salesperson.
Somewhere in the middle of those two ends, we can craft personal meaning. An example is how a janitor in a hospital talks to people rarely visited by their family while the janitor cleans so they don’t feel lonely. So, though we might be stuck at a job for the time being, it doesn’t mean we can’t find purpose within it with the right attitude.
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Those are the four things we can apply personally to work smarter. Of course, there are interrelations (e.g., doing less and obsessing will free up mental capacity for creative, value-centered redesigns) and dichotomies (e.g., you can take the base of the purpose pyramid too far and justify selling addictive drugs) among them. We don’t need to apply all of these perfectly, but making incremental, deliberate efforts to do so can help us achieve better outcomes without burning out ourselves.
