Originally, I wanted to be a programmer. But my friends dad told us how hard he worked and he was only average. That scared me away.

For better or for worse, I’m the “work smart not work hard” type. What sort of things should I focus on? What should I target? Any other advice?

9 comments

  1. any job that scales on talent rather than pay purely on hours worked or service

    e.g. a 10X software programmer can easily be worth $1M to Google

    but 10X isn’t really a thing as a nurse or a pilot

  2. I find jobs that allow you time to think and plan a little work best. Classic examples are developer sprint cycles where you have a week or two weeks to complete work. You can take a gamble on working out a smarter solution in these.

    Sometimes you have to pick your smarter/not-harder battles. My job is a mix of reactive need it now work and we need a solution in a week. Where I can I think out better/easier solutions for my longer deliverables. Sometimes I even work out a longer timeline on the reactive need-it-right-now stuff.

    With reactive jobs, even something like inbound call handling, you can build up resources for yourself to assist. I stored all my responses to support queries for instance in a simple DB/spreadsheet with a few other fields to help filter/find details when I worked that role. I would search it for responses I’d already written and pull them out quicker than searching sent. I also wrote responses with the idea that specific details were called out at the top or bottom of the response to keep them generic.

    Overtime it became easier and easier to handle responses for say 30% of my requests. I also would refine/improve those responses based on how well they worked.

    This work paid off reasonably well. Made hitting targets and closure rates easier month over month.

  3. I mean, this really just means “be efficient.” It applies to all jobs and just about every other task you do.

  4. Lots of knowledge work is like that. Speaking personally, a lot of higher level copywriters I know fall into this category.

  5. Honestly, you need to grow or develop into these types of roles by showing an aptitude for creativity or efficiency while grinding away. Take on special projects or ask if you can be involved. When you create efficiencies share them with your team (of it makes sense). Once you are worth more to the company than your labor, that’s when you’ve made it.

    However! “Work smarter” can also mean doing what’s needed and not overdoing or overthinking things. I see too many people struggle with this! Delivering something simple early to buy you the ability to get an extension on another project. Getting to the right answer by making logical deductions and targeted assessments instead of something sweeping and systematic. And don’t reinvent the wheel unless you’re told you have to!

  6. Project Managers fit the bill. New ones run around like headless chickens, but experienced PMs know better. They know that all the time and budget estimates will inevitably be wrong and that people quit and fuck things up. They’ve planned for all of these things.

  7. In my own professional experience and as I’ve gotten older and have taken on increasing responsibility, I see that the more you are overseeing rather than doing presents many more opportunities to work smarter not harder. I’m all about removing unnecessary steps, automating when possible (as a programmer, you know this), scrapping and redoing whole programs if it’s gotten so bad we are serving the system rather than it serving us. As someone who manages groups of people, this also includes optimizing your talent by giving the great ones room to make things better and improving the sandbaggers or moving them out. Dead weight kills everyone’s moral and kills efficiency.

  8. Every field has dedicated folks and “lazy” folks. I think you need to explain your expectations a bit more. Early on, you are a novice at whatever you do. Which means, you will work hard. I will say, specific to software engineering, some people can achieve “flow” much easier than others. When in a state of flow, things come easy. Average engineers / developers tend to work harder because they struggle to reach flow. 10x engineers get in flow easily. 10x people don’t become 10x just by effort, they also get there by natural ability.

    * How much money do you want to make?
    * What level of career dedication do you have?
    * how much of a job do you want vs. a career?
    * physical vs. mental? repetitive vs. creative?

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