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3 Uncommon Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder
Self-awareness, not effort, determines our productivity
Self-awareness rules productivity.
How much you can work is not determined by how hard you try, it is determined by how well you know yourself.
Hardworking people constantly fight their limitations. Smart people work with those limitations instead of against them.
The only way to maximize your output and creativity across your entire life is to do the most you can on the most number of days. This makes it sound like our daily recipe should be “go as hard as you can for as long as you can,” but that’s not the case — days on which you do nothing at all are very much factored into the above equation.
You must consistently deliver at a rate you can sustain forever. That’s the trick. How much you can overclock for a short period of time does not matter, especially if at the end of your overdrive, you burst into flames.
In that sense, working smarter is the only way to work harder. If you can’t find your maximum sustainable pace, you’ll go through an endless cycle of working too hard and then burning out — and that definitely won’t help you do the most you can possibly do.
