Work Hard or Smart? How About Both?

“Work smart not hard.” This is one of those ideas that sounds great on a billboard. Sound perfect in a tweet. And might even get someone a few email subscribers for suggest that it’s the truth. But as much as this is a great catch phrase:

It doesn’t speak to the reality of who gets ahead in life.

People who get ahead work both smart and hard. That’s right. You can do both.

And it’s a combination of both working smart and hard that differentiates the best from the rest.

Take two people with the same intelligence, same circumstances, same privileges and understanding of the world and give them the same amount of hours in a day. These people are just as smart as one another on day one.

These people have access to the same resources. But one person decides that they’re going to work two extra hours every single week without impacting their 8 hours of sleep each night.

There are 52 weeks in a year. In year one, the person who puts in an extra two hours has 104 extra hours of training, learning, execution & perspective.

In year two, that person has 208… In year three, that person has 312..

In year four, that person has more than 400 extra hours of experience under their belt in comparison to the person who they started with.

Who do you think will have the bigger advantage?

Let’s talk about it.

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Ross Simmonds is the CEO and founder of Foundation, a content marketing agency that partners exclusively with ambitious B2B brands looking to create and distribute content that inspires action and produces sales and leads.

Ross hosts the weekly podcast “Create Like the Greats” and speaks on stages all over the world about the power of content marketing.

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