How To Work Smarter and Achieve More

In this generation of 'smarts', and by smarts, I mean, smartphones. A person may say, “a phone is a phone, which one is smart?”. To be candid, all phones are smart. As far as making calls to persons in places you are not is concerned, they are smart. But some do more and better, so we say they are 'smart'. On this canvass, I will like to paint the picture of working smarter to achieve more.

I am an advocate of the fact that no one is dumb. But to deny the fact that some are smarter, is dumb. There are 3 traditional ways of getting a message from the Horn of Africa into Cape-Town, South Africa. You travel 1. by land, 2. on the Indian Ocean, or 3. by air. Our generation is well aware that there are better ways of getting the message across. Make an international call, at almost no cost, compared to the huge cost of traveling. Or the smarter way; send an e-mail, or the smartest yet, chat. Instant messaging they call it. How appropriate. 

For a student to live in this generation, and yet not appropriate the available resources optimally, is to work 'dumb'. You are intelligent, agreed, but why are you playing down your intelligence? Step up your game intelligently, use technology.  

Technology: 

The good and the bad. The peak of technology have it's base on the Internet. The internet is what you make of it. How you use your internet access is a more significant factor to how smart you work.

So, should I start by telling you how to use the internet, when I did not tell you in the first place how to locate this writing on the internet? Surely you know your ways around this web. More than your being internet savvy, how do you use your time around the internet?

I am talking largely on the use of the internet, not because it is the only technology, but because it is Technology, and probably all there is to technology for most. Ask anyone, what is a smartphone, most will connect the advantage with the ability to 'smartly' connect the internet. iPads? Super fast highway to the... you fill in the gap.

The greatest downside of the internet to many is distractions, and to many more, information overload. I want to know as much as wikipedia, but what a joke! And then, this other information the details of which I want to know... oh my, where did I left off? Such is the way the internet is.

Chunking:

Hey! Break it down. That is what chunking is. Do you have an assignment too big for you to attempt at a go? Break it down. Learn to live a day at a time. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”  So break today's trouble down. 

Apply your arithmetic, use that division ( ∕ ),  break the task into chunks you can manage. Knowing how best to chunk and not damage the whole comes with practice, so set your back to it and chunk away.

Study but always try and teach the little you know, 

“What I kept I lost,what I spent I had, what I gave I have” - Persian proverb

The best way to have is to give, and you cannot give what you don't have. How do you have in the first place? Studying. Good, you have studied, but what you now hold is not yet yours fully. To make it yours, you have to give it away. 

So to have complete mastery of what you have studied, teach it. What you are happy about knowing, some out there are sorry they ever have to study the same thing. Reach out to them and you help them out ( of which you feel good about), they know it, and you master it. It is a smart thing masters do.

Ask Questions:

You will never forget your own questions hurriedly, and you are not likely to forget the answer you receive for every sincere questions asked in the bid to learn. Besides, masters know that they will never have time to study many things on their own, but they get the benefit of other peoples research, by asking them questions. 

Therefore, it is possible to get the benefit of many year work by asking a question, in a few minutes. Inability to speak (ask questions) is the genesis of all ill-luck - says my best English teacher. It is a smart thing to do. You may look like a fool for 5 minutes, but you become a master and an achiever for life.