There’s a common saying in the working word that goes, “Work smarter, not harder.”
I admit that it wasn’t until I went into business for myself that I even began to have an idea of what this means. Up until that point, I assumed the only way to make money was to keep working harder. But, as my business grew and as I began to value my time more, I realized you can make money without running headfirst toward adrenal fatigue.
Here are just some of the ways I’ve learned to work smarter instead of harder in my business.
Ask for help.
People hate asking for help.
I don’t know where we learned that asking for help is a sign of weakness, but it’s certainly not doing us any favors as business owners.
The reality is you can’t do everything by yourself. You also don’t know the answers to everything. No one does. That’s why if you want to work smarter, you need to start asking for help.
Consider the alternative. You’re working on a project and you’re not sure about the next steps. Rather than asking an expert on the topic for some guidance, you try to figure it out yourself and end up wasting an entire day. If you had asked the expert, you would have saved yourself a lot of time and headaches.
Take me in my business. I recently asked for help twice. The first time was for help editing some audio (because I’d rather stick a fork in my hand than spend my time editing podcasts on GarageBand). The second time was when I needed some guidance on how to find a worthy cause to partner with.
Had I tried to do these things by myself, I either would have wasted an eternity or just never gotten around to doing the actual project.
Take breaks.
Taking breaks from your work actually is a way to work smarter. The reality is if we don’t recharge, we won’t do great work.
It’s taken me a while to get this but I think I finally do. I’ve been around the rodeo enough times by now to know that if I feel burnout coming on, I need to take a day off. That way when I get back to work I feel refreshed and I can kill it.
Use systems and processes.
Systems and processes will help you work smarter because it takes a lot of work off your hands. For example, I’m now starting to use my all-in-one e-commerce and email marketing system to run my membership site.
Once payment is made, students automatically get an email with their next steps. It all runs on autopilot so my team and I don’t have to do everything ourselves.
(Note: It took us about a year and a half to finally use this feature, but it’s been well worth the effort.)
Final Thoughts
Working smarter doesn’t happen overnight. This is especially true when most of us haven’t been taught what working smarter actually looks like. However, by becoming conscious of how you can run your business better, you can start running things more smoothly.
