Six Keys to Working Smart

        When we transition into new endeavors in our lives, our instincts may be to dive right into the work without going through a preparatory period to become competent at the task. This headstrong approach works with some things where you can learn efficiency through trial and error, but with most things it may be prudent to first learn the "how to" before diving in. Here’s a story to illustrate this point from Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

         

There’s a guy who stumbled into a lumberjack in the mountains. The man stops to observe the lumberjack, watching him feverishly sawing at this very large tree. He noticed that the lumberjack was working up a sweat, sawing and sawing, yet going nowhere. The bystander noticed that the saw the lumberjack was using was about as sharp as a butter knife. So, he says to the lumberjack, “Excuse me Mr. Lumberjack, but I couldn’t help noticing how hard you are working on that tree, but going nowhere.” The lumberjack replies with sweat dripping off of his brow, “Yes…I know. This tree seems to be giving me some trouble.” The bystander replies and says, “But Mr. Lumberjack, your saw is so dull that it couldn’t possibly cut through anything.” “I know”, says the lumberjack, “but I am too busy sawing to take time to sharpen my saw.”

        Mr. Lumberjack can exert the most effort of any lumberjack in the world, but he’ll never be great at his job unless he works smarter. In fact, his maximum effort along with a smart strategy could allow him to move up the rankings from one of the worst lumberjacks in the world to one of the best. Similarly, we may be shortchanging our ability to become great by utilizing ineffective strategies to accomplish our goals.

         When I was a senior in high school, I made it a goal to break the school record in the mile. In order to accomplish this, I decided that I was going to work harder than any other runner in our program’s history starting as soon as the cross country season concluded. Since there is more than a three month gap in between the end of the cross country season and when the track season began, the results from my chosen training program would probably determine how my senior season would go.

          I designed my training program without consulting any coaches or doing any research on the topic. I thought that my work ethic and having a training plan would be enough to make me the best in school history. Looking back at the approach, it amounted to a very poor strategy for a lot of reasons.

         My plan was to run 40 miles per week at a pace between 5:30-8:00 minutes per mile. Even though my training plan required a lot of effort and would send me out into the frigid Minnesota winter on a regular basis, it was extremely flawed. The first flaw was that the school record was 4:20 and none of my training runs had me running close to that fast even at shorter distances. I essentially ran a lot of "junk" miles. If you want to run really fast you have to train your muscles, heart, and lungs to acclimate your body to that pace. By running 1:10-3:00 per mile slower than my goal time with 100% of my training, my work strategy could accurately be deemed “working dumb.”  I was nowhere near prepared to run even a 4:49 mile by the time the season started that I had run a year earlier with limited winter training.

         The other flaw in my training plan was that I would run hard as many days in a row as I possibly could. My reasoning was that it would make me the hardest worker and therefore the fastest runner. Little did I realize that my body needed time to recover from difficult workouts. In fact, muscles in general need time to repair themselves and get stronger. If you work them out before they recover, you break down the muscles more and they actually get weaker and become more susceptible to injury. Rest in between the hard workouts is nearly as important as the workout itself.

         As you could have predicted by now, my senior season started out as an epic failure. As 2/3 of the season went on, I still had not exceeded my junior year times in any event. Fortunately, I had a father who was very concerned about my regression and ended up calling a college track coach to get some tips. Sherald James, who ended up being my future coach at BYU, told him that I should run only 6X400 meter interval sessions (with 60 seconds in between to recover) the rest of the season with 48 hours of rest in between each session. I also decided to switch events to the 800 meters to increase my probability of success.

         I carefully followed Coach James’ advice. It worked even better than any of us had an envisioned. According to my high school coach, it was the greatest three week improvement he had ever witnessed. I took 12 seconds off my 800 meter time and broke into the top 20 in school history in the event. Although I didn't accomplish my initial goal, it certainly provided me a silver lining. It is still my belief that if I had not implemented the new strategy offered up by Coach James and made drastic improvement in the final 3 weeks of my HS career, I never would have tried running in college. That was a powerful lesson for me about the power of working smart.

         Bill Bowerman who is one of the greatest track coaches of all time summarized my flawed thinking as follows:  “The idea that the harder you work, the better you're going to be is just garbage. The greatest improvement is made by the man or woman who works most intelligently.”

        As most people are trying hard to improve in different areas of their lives other than running there are certain common principles to working smart. You can have the greatest intentions in the world to work harder than everybody else, but it isn’t enough in most instances. You need to combine your stellar work ethic with a strategy that maximizes output and improvement.
       This advice could apply in skill development in the business world, developing your talents, or just tinkering with your hobbies. Here are six keys to working smart:

1)      Emulate the work habits of others who are better than you  – If there is someone in your field a cut above you, seek them out for advice. If the information that separates them from everybody else in making them successful is revealed on the internet, take those insights and implement them into your strategy to improve. The very elite people in most industries have biographies or "how to" books with secrets to their success
2)      Use your peak hours – My work product is better and I am more efficient at peak times of the day. If I am trying to accomplish the same thing during the time of day I am winding down, it may take me much longer and will probably be worse overall than if I had done it during my most productive hours of the day. The author of Four Hour Work Week had this insight: “By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.”
3)      Be consistent in maintaining your skills – One of the biggest challenges of being a full time worker in your career job is that it's difficult to make other goals you are trying to accomplish a priority. Nonetheless, you need to give consistent priority efforts to stay sharp and continue to improve. As you spend enough time towards a specific goal, it takes less time to maintain what you have than to build skills that you haven't acquired yet.
4)      Keep up with innovations in your field – There are a lot of really smart people in the world that likely are trying to improve in the same field as you. Some of them may even come up with ideas that really improve your efficiency. There is no reason to revert to outdated and less effective principles if better ones are available to you. The best people in their fields are tracking innovations, so should you.

5)      Mix things up to stay fresh psychologically – If you are working on your goals regularly, try and plan ways to psychologically mix things up every day. In my college running program, I knew which days I would be doing intervals, long distance, hills, easy days, etc. All of those workouts helped me in different ways and helped me stay fresh psychologically. You will burn out if you aren't mentally stimulated by the activity, so mix it up so that you can keep doing it for years and years.
6)      Keep in mind the law of diminishing returns – If you work too long and hard on one activity, your mind and body will eventually wear out. Know when to quit and come back fresh another day when you can make more efficient use of your time.

        We sometimes learn the hard way that working smart is as important if not more important than working hard. You will benefit greatly from putting some thought into your efficiency and devising ways to increase your long-term endurance into keeping at it. As you know from my first ever post, it's just a matter of time before you surpass everybody else who have already given up.