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Have you ever wondered which one is the best way to get result?
Is it true that working hard guarantee everything?
How about working smart?
Sometime, people with the hardest work, didn’t get the result. They just did almost everything to achieve their goal, without ever thinking what should be done, and what should not be done.
Does it mean we only need to work smart?
NOPE.
Sometime, people failed because they think they’ve worked smart, while in fact they didn’t put much effort in achieving their goal.
So, think again, did successful people who worked smart, didn’t work hard?
That’s why I can say the best way to get the result is to combine both.
Disappointed with my answer? Let’s take a look deeper.
Let’s go define what working smart and working hard means in this article.
Working smart means that you know the best way to achieve your goal, before you are really into your work. Or in other words, take smart choice.
Working hard means that you have to maximize yourself to achieve your goal, put as much effort that you can do on something that matters.
Through my experience and my observation of some friends, the combination of both is effective. It can be implemented in everything that you want to achieve, including your academic life and non-academic life.
Ready to take an example?
TAKE AN ACADEMIC LIFE example, as I know this must be favorite part for you who already desperate. (Don’t worry, you are not alone! I’ve ever felt the same way too, when I was a freshman and get sucked with TPB life hahaha)
Case:
At my first year, I was so desperate. The calculus, physics, and whatsoever were damn hard. To be honest, I didn’t like the subject. I didn’t want to waste too much of my time for getting stuck with calculus. I wanted life as active college student, doing non-academic life, without too much worrying about my calculus. But, the calculus was 4 credits!!! It would really affect my score to pass TPB stage (TPB is a one-year class to learn all about science including calculus, physics, and chemistry before you really get your own major). So, how could I be going through my TPB life? My goal is as simple as getting B score (just hope to get passed this deathly calculus, because I don't like the it hahaha)
How to?
1. Know where to maximize your effort
(1st Research) Calculus’s grade was made up by 40% midterm exam, 40% final exam, and 10% quiz.
(1st Strategy) I would put much effort to learn calculus in exam, Quiz would be my second priority.
2. Know how to success in your best opportunity.
As mentioned before that my best opportunity was on exam. So, I learnt from the previous exam. You can reach senior, or people that understand calculus.
(2nd Research) As I read from many previous exam, the questions in exam typically came from Tutorial (itu loh yang kertas burem2)
(2nd Strategy) I got focus to learn and understand how to answer the questions in Tutorial. You don’t have to learn it by yourself. It will be more effective if you already have friends or key answer that can explain the answer. Don’t forget to seek opportunity to be effective in what you do.
3. Focus and try execute your strategy well.
It’s time to put much effort on your strategy. In my case, it’s not enough with only knowing key answer of Tutorial and just read it. Takes time to really understand how the questions are answered correctly.
(Execute 2nd Strategy) You already know that your best strategy is learning from tutorial, so you don’t have to put much effort learning from other resource such as other calculus’s book (I can mention the name of the book, as it was commercial). Be focus on learning tutorial until you really understand. This will help a lot in making your time effective, but still have a chance to get the best result.
(Execute 1st Strategy) I still remembered that I have a lot of busy time in Semester 2 (my fellow faculty mates had to run 5 practicums!!!! That’s crazy, even crazier with my non-academic life that I had to do). How I was going through this? To be honest, I almost skipped to learn for quiz. There was 4 quiz overall, and I just learnt for the first quiz. Even worse, I filled almost blank space in the 3rd and 4th quiz, because I didn’t have time to learn. But, the fact was amazing, I still got ‘AB’ for calculus. That’s pretty good for me, since my goal is actually just getting B for Calculus. In addition, I just learn maximally on exam and only learnt from tutorial. Even more, I already bought calculus’s practice book but it turned out that it got blank at all, because I didn’t have time to learn from it.
Conclusion: I found that working smart and working hard is a perfect formula for achieving goal. It’s not happen only in getting grades, but can be in many things including winning competition, doing your organization job description. By the way, this perfect formula still can’t guarantee you to achieve result, because you have to bear in mind that life is not a mathematics equation. There will be a ‘factor X’ that I believe belongs to my God, Allah. Working smart and working hard are something that we can do, but the final result belongs to Allah (maybe next time, I will write about this, yeay). But remember, at least, with working smart and working hard, we increase our possibility significantly to achieve our goal.
"Life without strategy, is just a waste of time.”
Make it effective, cause you only live once