7 Ingredients to Work Smart

To be successful, you need to work hard at working smart. Working smart is getting the right things done to produce the desired results. How do you develop smart working ways? Here are the 7 components of getting smart at work:   

1. Attitude:  Your attitude is the manifestation of your feelings and thoughts. When your thinking is positive you behave and work positively and avoid a couldn’t-care-less attitude. You work calmly with full concentration and energy.

You cannot hide your attitude because people will take note of the way you go about doing your work. Be smart and work with a positive attitude.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. ~ Buddha

2. Enthusiasm: To realize your dreams and goals you work passionately. There is a fire in you when you find meaning in what you do.     

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.  ~Charles Schwab

3. Details: Paying attention to details is to work thoroughly. You don’t cut corners or take shortcuts. Quality is what you are looking for because your integrity and reputation are at stake. A completed assignment is made up of many small details.  

Details create the big picture. ~Sanford I. Weill

4. Planning: The most important thing to work smart is to get organized and plan ahead. Organizing is a smart way to manage time efficiently. A to-do list is a tool to get the right things done every day. The trick is to avoid being busy but not getting the right things done.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. ~Winston Churchill

5. Creative: To be creative is to work smart and be more productive. Doing more outstanding work in less time is the hallmark of creative people.  

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.
~John Updike

6. Personal brand: To have a brand is to create trust. The question to ask yourself is:  what do you want others to say about you in your absence?  Take responsibility for what you do and develop reliability so that others can count on you.

Your personal brand is a promise to your clients... a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability. ~Jason Hartman

7. Competent: Competency is about what you do best in your area of expertise. People look up to you for solutions to problems. They follow you because you have the answers.

No human being will work hard at anything unless they believe that they are working for competence. ~William Glasser

To work smart is to work with your mind effectively to produce excellent output.