what lies in true courage-

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Well, another assignment by my English teacher .This is my topic, work smart and not work hard. I think that working smart is better than working hard. Plain hard work as an avenue to success is a thing of the past and does not apply to the modern context of today’s society.

In the distant past, the only way to survive was to work very hard. Long ago, people depended on trading physical effort for a livelihood. Farmers have to make sure that they wake up during the wee hours of the day to till the land and they have to keep doing this for the rest of their life.
But much has changed since our forefathers depended on farming for a living. With the IT revolution, the whole of human race has been propelled into the digital age, which has no physical boundaries, and neither does it favour any particular group of people. Where information used to be a scarce resource, the amount of information that is freely available nowadays is simply overwhelming.

With the information overload, it is no longer enough to work hard. On the other hand, employees who only work hard will eventually be sidelined, as they will be deemed to be ineffective in handling the requirements of the new and evolved world. Instead those who work smart will move on with their lives.

Working smart does not mean not working at all. It only means that the worker knows what he should be working at. Instead of doing everything, he will do the things that will benefit the company or organisation. The smart workers will constantly work at applying Pareto’s Law at everything they chose to do. You must be wondering what is Pareto’s Law? It is knowing and doing the 20 percent that will bring about the disproportionate 80 percent of benefits to the company or organisation.

Putting this into the school context, the smart student will not even bother to master the whole text. He knows that only 20 percent of the things he learn will be tested. This allows him to save more time to focus on the subject matter that is really important on hand.
Therefore, working smart is better than working hard.
This is the end .Thanks for reading

{/7:17 AM}
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