Image Source: work hard… by kwanz
In the previous post, I said “Without working hard, we won’t be able to play hard. Without playing hard, it makes no sense to work hard.” You can find more about it at Play Hard – Take yourself out to the world.
In our life, we all are looking for some great achievement, so we drove ourselves into the work hard scenario. We tried to work hard, but we still don’t make good living and not achieving our dream. Why? I am not saying we don’t need to work. I am saying that we need to work smart.
How can we work smarter?
Let’s not think about how to work smart for a second. Let’s find out what work smart can bring to us.
- Work less hours – We need to cut down the time we spent on working. Let’s assume that we just want to work 4 hours a week. You heard it right. If you have not read Tim’s awesome book “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“, you can find out how it changed my life at Do you work like an entrepreneur or a dreamer?
- Get more jobs done - Spend less time and still get same amount of job done. It needs a lot of work to get to that point, but it’s never too late to start.
- Lower the cost - The most expensive thing that cost your business is simply YOU! You are both the soul of your life and the bottle neck of your business. Your time is priceless. You need to have spare time to think about your life and structure your business well. Pull you away from work will save a lot.
- We can have more time to play hard and enjoy our life - We work hard for what? We make a lot of money, because we want to fulfill our dream and live in a better life and enjoy the life. Don’t You? Many people work very hard and never have chance to enjoy their life. That’s too sad!
Like I said in my other posts, you don’t need to have a lot of money to play hard like billionaire. You can enjoy different type of fun with different type of budget you have. I can travel very luxury, but I decided to travel oversea for 7 months with my backpack. So can you!
How do I work smarter?
There are many different ways to work smart. I am still finding new ways to do so everyday. Here are some of the things I do to work smarter so I can play hard. Very hard.
- Check email twice a day – I only check my email twice a day and pretty much only reply once a day. This dramatically cut down the time I spend on screening email a day.
- Answer my blog comments once a day – The benefit to answer comments once a day is to get your visitor coming back again tomorrow. If you answer comment too fast, they may either ignore your follow up email or never come back to your blog, because they just went there. There is not much new stuff for them to read.
- Don’t answer any calls – I setup automatically voice mail for all my phone calls, except the 1-800 calls for my business. However, I only screen the calls that are a return calls. So I don’t waste time on answer some marketing call or non-business related calls. To use the great 1-800 calls service for your home or small business, you can get a very high quality and inexpensive service from Kall8. You can start with US $4.00 a month. A great add-on to your small business.
- Organize schedule online and offline with Google Calendar - I used Google calendar everyday to operate my small business for FREE. Check out my post about 10 Google programs to operate your small business for FREE. Google calendar is a great service that allows me to share my schedule or online store event with my customers. I also share to do list with my business partners. I recently discover how to sync my Thunderbird and Lighting email and calendar program with Google Calendar. So I can take my calendar to go with me, while I traveled around the world. It allows me to update my public online calendar whenever I can.
- Take a break – Work hard is also part of our life. Enjoy your work can bring more productivity. Have a cup of coffee, go to lunch with friend, have a great time afternoon to chat with friends or twittering will release your mind from think too much about your business issues. Social with friends and stranger can bring your some inspiration and find better solutions to solve your problem quicker.
- Hire someone - How much does it costs you to do a smile jobs? In many cases, you think you are the best person to do this and do that. You can fix some problem and get something done faster than anyone in the world, but you will spend all your time on that thing and never get anything else done. Hire someone and train someone to do the job for you will release you from the “Too-Much-Work-To-Do” excuses. Like I said earlier, you are the most valuable asset to your business. Your time is priceless.
- No TV News and No Newspaper - I don’t watch TV that much anymore. I only watch DVD once every few weeks. Listening to news is just wasting time. You get the most up-to-day news and gossip from your friends or online buddy at lunch time or break time. You just need to know the brief information about what’s going on. You don’t have to know everything that is not helping your business grow.
- Only read what you have to read – As a blogger, I have to read what other bloggers are saying. I try to cut down the time I spent online blogging and reading. I have spent too much time and reading how people make money online. I realize that most of the information are just copied, repeated or all over the places. So I stop reading those blogs that is not helping me doing my business. I only read those unique and interesting blogs that inspired me to generate new blog post. I have cut down my time from reading 300 blogs a day to 20 blogs.
- More time on thinking and Less time on doing – The best way to increase your productivity is to think deeply and plan well. Without think thoroughly, you often make mistakes and double the time you work on one task. In many case, I spend more time on thinking and make sure all the task I will be doing don’t waste time and don’t make mistake. I will, then, do it very quickly without hesitation. I can actually get job done faster, so I can have more time to have fun and play hard.
Do you have ways to increase your productivity and work smarter? I would love to learn from you.
About Terence Chang
I try to live by the 72 hours rule. This means everything you plan on doing. Do this within the next 72 hours.
There has been a research that says if you don’t start a certain task there is a big chanche you won’t do it at all.
@Matthijs Hofstede:
That’s interesting to me. I haven’t heard about that 72 hours rule. It sounds very true. That’s what exactly happened to my back yard. I always wanted to complete my back yard. ….. Thank you for bring that up. Great point!
Yes, the journey of a thousand miles with the first step. So, just start. In my experience I have found that there is no one formula that will fit everyone. I have read many books and articles on working smart and came to the conclusion that only the writers were working smart. They were making money off people like me.
Each of us has to find our own method and more importantly, for lack of a better turn of phrase, our rhythm. If you have got that pat, I think we start being smart in our work.
More time thinking and less time doing is a great tip. It’s amazing how a bit of planning can dramatically reduce the time spent executing goals, especially when you consider time spent fixing errors that a bit of planning would have eliminated all together.
@Dinning Tables:
Well said. We need to adjust our work pace frequently. Without adjusting our pace, we move slower. I often sit down and review what I have done in the past week and figure what was slowing down my process to get things done. Without reviewing, nothing will changed. I will still behind my schedule.
@Easy Witchcraft:
Thank you for visiting. You are right. We all need to learn how to reduce the time on project, but still get the project ahead of our schedule.
Terence I always get pulled into your intriguing posts when I come by. And I always go away thinking of how I could earn more, work less, and doing what?
Enjoy that chocolate bar,Terence, and Happy Easter!
Hi Terence – nice post! Also, wanted to drop by and say happy Easter
@Stacey:
Hmmm.. I hate that 100% pure chocolate. I need to learn how to melt it and mix it with some honey. May be making a chocolate fountain.
I hope you find your way out to work less and make more. Don’t forget to share your secret. 
@Mark:
Thank you! How many eggs did you hide or did you find? I have a great day today. I hope you had some fun too.
PS. You were on my spam list. I am wondering why? Does that happen to you on other blogs?
Informative post! Few bits from me … it always helps me to prioritize the tasks-to-do. Prioritization firstly forces me to think if I really need to do a task and if yes, then depending what priority it is, I can decide how much to spend on it
@PTC:
Thank you for stopping by. Yeah. We all need to learn the best ways to work smart. Everyone is different.