Work Hard vs. Work Smart?
In March of 2023, I applied to work on the Lex Fridman podcast. In the job form, he asked, "Is it better to work hard or work smart? Can you justify your answer?" People discuss this a lot. Nobody ever asked me directly. This blog post is my answer.
Is it better to work hard or work smart?
At its core, this question is a stochastic optimization problem.
Obviously, you should work hard and smart, as needed. Deciding when one strategy or another is best always depends on the situation at hand.
Nobody is infinitely smart and nobody is infinitely strong. Therefore, if you work hard, but not smart, you waste time and resources. If you work smart, but not hard, you still encounter problems that need to get brute-forced.
We live in a universe with a linear time scale and finite resources. Therefore, we work under constraints... We have work deadlines. And the work we can do is limited by the money, skills, tools, and raw materials available. We must use these resources optimally.
However, our resources and environment constantly change. And we must adapt.
Choosing the best work strategy is highly dependent on your working conditions. It requires experience, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and self-understanding.
Furthermore, it is fundamentally a strategy-level question. Focusing on strategy is always the wrong starting point to define how to work. You first need to understand what you are working towards with bleeding clarity. Only then will you be able to make an effective plan.
How to Make a Plan
There are four elements to making an effective plan.
| Elements | Explanation | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | This is a mission statement that comes from deep-rooted instinct. It is conceptual. Its an ideology or cause. Something unattainable. It’s the infinite game you play. | To earn more money as a performance athlete. |
| Goals | Goals are states or “snapshots” of reality that make you feel satisfied. They must be S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-oriented). | Achieve the first ever 1,200 lb squat. |
| Strategies | These are the general approaches you take to reach the goal. They are conceptual in nature. | 1. Strength Training 2. Improve Diet 3. Take performance drugs |
| Tactics | This is “the work” you do… Tactics are the specific actions you take to move towards a goal. They create change in the world. | 1. The daily weight lifting exercises you follow. 2. The foods you eat and when to eat them. 3. Testosterone boosters? Trambolin? HGH? |
Tactics cost time and money to execute. To create a good plan, you need to create the optimum mix of tactics. How much you need to focus on diet vs exercise. Which diet to follow and which strength training routine to perform. And whether to take supplements/steroids or not are all optimization questions. But remember, this is a stochastic optimizaiton problem, as there is risk in everything we do.
How to Account for Risk
The tactics you choose come with side-effects and risks. Always. Tactics are actions. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, tactics cause real change to the world around you, and therefore always include side-effects. The world is not fully predictable. There is always risk that a tactic either won't work. Or even create unimagined side-effects.
People typically have multiple purposes as well as multiple goals. The side-effects from the tactics you choose can create problems that conflict with other goals and purposes.
To continue with the example above, you could take performance drugs. This is a great strategy to get stronger, faster. If your purpose was to earn more money as a performance athlete, there is a risk of getting caught with steroids in your system... But if millions of dollars are at stake, that might be a risk worth taking.
Now, let's imagine your purpose was actually, to push your body to maximum physical strength for self-defense or warfare... And you had that same goal, to achieve a 1,200 lb squat. In this case, the side-effects of Trambolin might be completely acceptable.
Once you have a crystal-clear understanding of your purpose and an explicit goal set, the question of when you should “work hard” or “work smart” is no longer a philosophical debate. In fact, I'd argue this dichotomy collapses entirely.
Working smart becomes...
- Taking high-risk tactics, in situations you believe you can manage the risk.
- Spending time auditing resources, to pick efficient strategies and tactics.
Working hard becomes...
- Choosing lower-risk, or more proven tactics, to ensure you can manage risk.
- Picking less complex tactics with known resource usage and side-effects.
The new questions that emerge are: How much time do I have to make a plan? What are my resources? What's my risk tolerance?
You simply assess your resources available, and choose strategies and tactics that meet your goals and align with your purpose... And with acceptable side-effects and risks!
When you've identified your true purpose, explicitly defined your S.M.A.R.T. goal, and assessed the resources available to you, choosing the best strategies and tactics becomes straight-forward.
Why People Get It All Wrong
First off, people can't make perfect plans. There is always going to be risk and inefficiency.
But... we can make really good plans! Sadly, most people don't know how to do that.
The first major problem is that people often have poorly defined purpose and goals. And even mix these two items up together. Second, people neglect (or are unable) to properly audit or assess the resources available to them, so they choose goals, strategies and tactics that are not realistic. Third, they choose strategies and tactics without understanding the results, risks, and side-effects.
Back to the introductory statement, choosing when to work hard vs work smart the appropriate work strategy requires experience, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and self-understanding.
You must have the self-understanding to know your purpose. You must have the wisdom to set goals that will satisfy you. You must have the knowledge and intelligence to identify strategies and tactics to achieve the goal, under constraints. You must have experience carrying out the tactics chosen, in order to predict their risks and side-effects.
How to Get It Right
Learning to do all this is difficult. It takes practice.
Furthermore, planning is a skillset unto itself, just like writing, playing a sport, software engineering, music, and beyond. You can't get better by simply watching or reading about how to do these things. You need guided practice.
If you're interested in learning how to make plans, I made a Udemy course on this topic in 2021. The content is targeted towards English language learners. For years, students always asked me, "How can I improve my English?". One day, I realized students have no idea how to make a plan. So I created a system to help my students help themselves.
The system applies for any kind of plan, not just improving English. If you'd like to get better at planning, I suggest you take my course: Learn English FAST! How to Make a Plan.
It's fun and funny! And you'll learn a lot.