Smart Work Can Never Replace Hard Work

“There is no substitute for hard work.”
Thomas Alva Edison

Of late it is becoming a fad to say, “Don’t do hard work, just do smart work”. By the face value of this statement, it sounds justifiable because today there is so much of technological advancement in every field which has cut down the need for hard work.

 

Right from home automation, office automation, industrial automation to farming automation, we have found easier ways of doing thing, which otherwise was very time and labour consuming. Some examples;

In a home scenario, a mixer grinder or a washing machine can do the work in minutes which would normally have the house lady working hard on the same for few hours together.

A computer at office, is more efficient than 5 accountants using pen and paper method.

One Machinery at the factory can produce millions of PCs within limited time with 100% accuracy, which was not possible when things were handmade.

A tractor in the farm can plough vast areas of land within an hour, which would take days to do, in the days of  bullock cart.

 So these are smart ways of doing the same work, we did before but in much lesser time and that too without much effort. So every advancement in technology has led people from working hard to work smart. This in turn has given way for ample free time, to engage ourselves more productively.

 

So let us try to figure out, why then do people emphasize so much on hard work?

 With the invention of the calculator, technically there is no need to know any mathematics to do a simple calculation. All a person needs to know is the numerals 0 to 9 and the functional symbols for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. So, for example, if a person wants to add 2345799988 + 427256560, all he needs to know, is these numerals and plus symbol, printed on the keypad and when he presses these in the right sequence, the answer will automatically come. This is a classic example of smart work. But let us say if the same person, needs to know the logic behind the answer he needs to do the hard work of calculating with pen and paper or counting with fingers or some mind crunching, to understand how the result is arrived. So, true knowledge lies in hard work.

 

Every invention or a discovery is a result of sheer hard work.  Thomas Alva Edison worked very hard to invent a light bulb, and so there is a famous saying by him, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”. Similarly the great voyagers tried many routes, before they could reach the intended destination. The culmination of all this hard work is the basis for creating all the smart technologies, available in this world today.

 

This is an evolving continuum. One advancement leads to another. There is a saying, “Don’t re-invent the wheel”, which means you don’t have to start doing anything from scratch. We just need to build up on the existing technology. Every new technology is an upgrade of the existing technology. For example, handwriting became typewriting, type writing became computer typing, and now computer typing has moved to speech recognition typing or predictive typing. So, one technology leads to another. But imagine if someone had not taken the pain to form different types of alphabets, give it phonetics and put strings of letters together to form words and again strings of words to form sentences, then there would not have been any written language in the world. The process of creating such basic structure, upon which all developments are built is the core of hard work. Speaking the language thus created to communicate, is the core of smart work.

So, to simply state, “All creation is hard work and all application is smart work.” The point to understand is that hard work cannot be replaced, because while smart work can accelerate the speed of work, it is hard work that gives substance. 

 D. Senthil Kannan,

Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.

Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 

Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com