It was 1978, I was 26 years old, working in Mumbai. I was with my boss and in the conversation he said " Stop working Hard, Start Working Smart." I was impressed. But later on I realised, he did not tell me " How do I Work Smart."

The last 30 years of my life I have been investigating and enquiring into "How do I Work Smart."

Working Smart has today become an essential skill, if not a survival skill. What makes me say that?

Every executive I have met have some common complaints. " I have no time" " I don't know how to Balance my Life" " I wish I had 3 hrs more per day" " I have a job, do I have a Life" " I am working on so many things that I do not know what is priority" " I have been busy the whole day and yet I have, this feeling that, nothing has got done"

What are the Principles of Working Smart.

In the study of many successful people, certain fundamental principles have been discovered. Some of the key ones are:

Fundamental Principle - 1 CLARITY

Why and What do you want?

The Purpose and Specifics of your Goals.

It is a known statistic that most people have a plan on what they want to do, today, the next week and maybe next month.

Do you have a plan for the next one year, next 3 years and let's say even 10 years from now.

Fundamental Principle - 2 FOCUS

What areas do I need to focus on?

What steps can I take to reach my goal as per the completion date?

The 80/20 rule or Parettos law states that 80% of the Results come from 20 % of the Activities.

Getting results much greater than the efforts put in is, Working Smart.

Remember the school experiment, with a magnifying glass. Sunlight shines on a piece of paper. Nothing happens. With the magnifying glass, we focus the sunlight on the paper, within minutes the paper starts burning. What did we do? FOCUS. FOCUS allows us to Work Smart.

Is CLARITY and FOCUS enough. NO

Fundamental Principle - 3 ORGANISED EXECUTION

The name of the game today is EXECUTION.

15 years ago, an executive was given Goals to be accomplished, had enough time to get it done. People made to do lists, planned the day and somehow got the work done. A lot of the pending tasks were in the head, in memory, in pieces of paper, the secretary would remind you.

Today. The boss, client, customer is no longer interested in the TO DO List. They do not want to know that it is under process, they don't want to know " don't worry, it will get done".

They are only interested in DONE, COMPLETED, ACCOMPLISHED, CLOSED, FINISHED, DELIVERED.

The Principle is ORGANISED EXECUTION.

Do you follow a system, use follow up tools, and methods for ORGANISED EXECUTION.

We may be already successful in life. Just imagine what would happen to your Life if you practiced the principle :

Clarity - focus - organised execution

Kichu Krishnan is a multi faceted individual who has trained over 70000 people in the principles of WorkSmart, owns a restaurant in Koramangala, is the managing director of Sirius Controls; a company that manufactures battery charging equipment.

Issue BG88 July 08

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