This may sound counterintuitive but that is the simple truth. If hard work makes people rich, then the hardest worker should be the richest man. Have you ever wonder why Billionaire like Femi Otedola goes for vacation very now and then? I know a number of people who work harder and longer than Otedola and yet cannot pay their bills.

What then make people rich? Smart work! You will agree with me that one can be working hard and not be effective. One can be working hard and still be poor. But no one smart worker gets stranded.

Hard work don’t make people rich, smart work does

What is smart work?

Smart work means working with right and timely information using adept wisdom to produce exceptional result. Smart work does not necessarily mean working all the day. It means undertaking only the tasks that you must do and delegating others. The image below sheds more light

Information: To work smartly means to work with or base on right and timely information in your field. It means to be up to date on the innovations

The reason why most people work hard without commensurate result is because the work with outdated information, redundant knowledge and obsolete strategies.

Knowledge: Every working endeavor has its unique technical know-how. No matter how hard you work, failure to master the technical know-how of what you do equal working without result—hard work.

Risk: Working smartly requires that you take risk, not needless risk but calculated ones. Alinko Dangote, Femi Otedola can explain better. One cannot know what productive looks like if one never takes risk.

Prediction: Change is constant. The ability to understand through holistic prediction and use the changes related to your work is a significant different between a smart and hard worker.

Dynamism: One thing is to be able to predict change, another thing entirely different but important is to be able to adapt with the change and use it to your advantage. Smart workers are dynamic enough to adapt with change.

Initiative: Working smartly requires that you take initiative always. It requires that you be open to opportunities and grab them while they last. Most rich people become rich because they were smart enough to see an opportunity and leverage it before it becomes public knowledge.

In summary, if your desire is to be rich, then stop working hard and start working smart.

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One thing is to have a sound perception about failure. Another thing entirely different is to respond in a healthy manner. Successful people respond differently to failure. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after six months. He built a company from the very scratch. He called it “Apple”. As it were, one is too small number to build a sustainable global company. Jobs invited people to invest in his company. To cut the story short, Steve was sent out of Apple by the men he brought in. It was a severe blow to Jobs.

Just like any other person, Jobs was devastated. It seems to be the end of the world for him. Job knew too well that failures are inevitable, how we respond is optional. So, he responded in a way that made a way. Instead of committing suicide, or constituting nuisance, Jobs set out to start again a new company he called “NEXT”. And life continued.

The interesting part of the story is that; few years later, ‘Apple Computers’ begged to bring Jobs back and bought “NEXT”. Now think of it, if Jobs had committed suicide? What could have happened?

No matter how the eminence of your failure, you have a choice to dust yourself up and try again. Don’t give up.