If you do much non-fiction reading, there's a good chance that somewhere in the last few years you've read or heard the phrase, "work smarter not harder." At first glance, this sounds appealing and agreeable. Why work harder when you could simply work smarter? With computers, we're undoubtedly working smarter and more productive than we were 10 or 20 years ago. That's an advantage for our current work culture because it means going out of your way to do things in a more intelligent and intuitive manner. Instead of spending an hour or two on a specific task, we can utilize productivity shortcuts or software that simplifies the work down to a 30 minutes or less.
The goal of the "work smarter, not harder," school of thought is that if you are responsible for 8 hours of work per day, you should be "smart" enough to get it done in 4-6 hours. That's incredible. If you can get done in 4-6 hours what it takes others 8 hours to complete, why wouldn't you?
But this is where our gripe comes in. If you can, in fact, get the same work done in 4-6 hours, should you really quit for the day? That's the goal of the phrase, "work smarter, not harder." Obviously, there's nothing wrong with calling it a day. You got a ton of work done in a short amount of time and that is not to be taken lightly. However, if you can keep up that same level of productivity for another 2-4 hours, why wouldn't you take advantage of that?
A few of our team members heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak a while back at the Salesloft Rainmaker 2016 conference. If you're unfamiliar with Gary, you should be (Check him out on Twitter, YouTube, or Snapchat to have your mind blown). Gary subscribes to the idea of working smarter and harder. It's hard to imagine seeing someone work harder than he does. I'd venture to guess someone who works that hard and that smart is able to get done in one day what most struggle to accomplish in two or three days at the office.
We're all for work/life balance at Foojee and using our freedom to manage those two on an individual level. However, we want our team to be working both smarter and harder. By doing both of those things, you're able to reach levels that many others only ever attain in their dreams. It's why everyone on our team is a W-2 employee instead of a 1099 contractor. It's why we've been around for 7+ years without seeking external funding. We're proud of our smart work and our hard work.
You can get a lot of great work done working smarter and not harder, but we'd prefer to do both.