In Your Head, or In Your Feet?
Many innovations have
been invented and
adopted since this office picture was taken. But the idea still remains... "What you don't have in your head, you must have in your heels."
2) Organization: Turbocharging Your Life With Smart Habits
Layoffs are always painful. I worked at a company years ago that had never had a round of layoffs. For the entire life of the company, everything had gone smoothly, and everybody was happy, happy, happy.
Until one rotten day when 10% of the company got laid off. Just like that. Out the door. Many of them were PhD-level scientists who’d been working at the company for decades.
People were shell-shocked. Nobody knew if more layoffs were coming.
Upper management called a meeting to calm people down...
“Work Smarter, Not Harder”
One of the top-level mucky-mucks in the company stood up and said a line that’s stuck in my memory ever since. “We know you’re all working as hard as you possibly can. So what we want you to do is to work smarter, not harder.”
That was a buzz-phrase in the 1980s and 1990s. “Work smarter, not harder.”
I remember wondering what planet this guy lived on. Because what does that buzz-phrase actually mean? I had no idea. And if it meant something, why the devil didn’t he explain? Why didn’t he set up some training courses to teach us how to work smarter, not harder?
I decided that he probably had no idea how to work smarter. It was just an empty phrase, tossed out to shift blame onto the workers. Because in the next round of layoffs, whoever lost their job would be at fault—they didn’t work smarter.
As it turns out, there are ways to work smarter. After I escaped that dismal meeting, I realized I couldn’t count on upper management to teach me how it was done. So I decided to find some books on working smarter. I’ve been learning new ways to work smarter ever since.
He has a number of tips on working, work habits, and a book recommends.
Those who have read some of my past posts may remember the one about my Grandma Magill and her words of wisdom to us girls.
"What you don't have in your head you have to have in your heels."
That's what she meant by working smarter. It can also be summed up in thinking outside the box and saving yourself work. As in my mom wanting to rent a chain saw to cut our fire wood faster to free up time and work.
Many innovations have been invented and adopted since this office picture was taken. But the idea still remains. "What you don't have in your head, you must have in your heels."
