People that deliver volumes of work instead of intelligent solutions, rarely get promoted. Same applies to business. If you excel in mastering the shovel and there’s a mountain of dirt to be moved, nobody will try to take you out of the field. work smart, not hard.

Companies that don’t reduce their operational cost by intelligently enhancing their production (of goods or services) suffer on the long run.

Here are 5 ideas you should consider if you want to be successful:

Automate your work

This one didn’t make it to the top of the list by accident. If day by day you are performing an extensive time-consuming MANUAL work, something is very, very wrong. Either you haven’t figured out (existing) ways to make it easier, or the process hasn’t been tweaked OR you simply need some automation. Yeah, it takes effort to analyse what’s wrong, understand how to fix it and actually fix it. On the long run, it’s a sure win.

Unless you’re building satellites or some new unseen before technology (which I really doubt), there’s a good chance that somebody has already created a solution to automate whatever you’re doing. You may not have the knowledge yourself, but you can certainly find someone who has it or can do it for you, even for free or for a small cost.

Use tools that integrate

This one actually relates to the first one. Choosing tools that integrate will make your life much more easier than you expect. Tools that integrate can send data from one another, either directly by simple setting up some connection details or support some form of export / import. That’s why choosing the right tool stack when you start a project is of paramount importance.

Delegate

I have seen on multiple projects, senior developers that don’t delegate code reviews, managers that don’t delegate reports or meetings, architects that want to be part of every meeting and they barely have any time left to complete their own hands-on work. Delegating is a matter of trust. Trust your team or you will collapse under the burden of your own work.

Keeping secrecy of your work will not secure your workplace if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact from the management point of view, if you are the only who knows how to do something, that is a risk that has to be addressed. Just saying.

Make re-usable units of work

Those of you working in IT are familiar with this concept, but let’s expand it for the others. Even if your job is to create all sort of reports and starting from the same format you have to generate 4-5 different reports, see if you can change the format and re-use as much as possible. Re-usability reduces time spent on a task and implicitly the cost (because labour time translates to money spent).

 I’ve seen so many people not even questioning the work they have to do. Have the courage to ask WHAT information is actually needed. Maybe you can propose something that takes less of your time and makes it more effective.

Prioritize

I’ve explained here a simple way to prioritize your work. Prioritizing implies some things might not get done. If those things were not so important and not urgent or simply unimportant, it doesn’t matter. Focus on the things that matter, those that bring value for you.

When it comes to labour time, paid work takes priority and so does work impacted by deadlines. I’ve seen people granting priority to pro-bono work vs paid work, to improvements or nice-to-have features over those mandated by contract. That’s why a project manager seems to have a nagging role, reminding everyone what has to be done, what takes priority and by when has to be done. Many people lose focus and get lost into details. This is a slip that especially small companies or projects working on tight deadlines can’t afford.

What about you? What other tricks do you know that could help others work smart? Let us know in a comment!