Page 85 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

38 WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

Working smarter is another management maxim seen as a modern
development, but the seed of the idea was there back in 1758 when
Benjamin advised us to ‘let us then be up and be doing, and doing to
the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity’.

An enthusiastic advocate of hard work, Franklin was not blind to the fact
that labour for labour’s sake is not in itself a virtue and that real
productivity goes hand in hand with the ability to focus on the real goals
and deliverables.

DEFINING IDEA…
When in doubt, mumble; When in trouble, delegate; When in charge,
ponder.
~ JAMES H. BOREN, AUTHOR OF WHEN IN DOUBT, MUMBLE: A BUREAUCRAT’S

HANDBOOK

The working culture of long hours and lunchtimes snatched at the keyboard
is no longer the purely Anglo-Saxon phenomenon it once was Increasingly,
employees feel they are expected to put in long hours in order to show
commitment. Often this culture comes in by means of an insidious creep,
where nobody wants to be seen to go home earliest or take the longest
lunch break, and a lose/lose escalation kicks off.

Working smarter can really be boiled down to a combination of personal
organisation, prioritising and (where appropriate) delegation—in that order.

Personal organisation starts with managing your diary at the very least, and
project management software if that’s what you are using. A lot of work
crises that seem to ambush us at the last minute are, if we are honest with
ourselves, entirely predictable were we to spend a little more time with our
diaries working out deadline clashes. If your project is very complicated
then project management software, with its ability to track and schedule
multiple stages and tasks within a single project, is well worth the
investment in both finance and learning that you need to get up to speed.