There is growing interest in the idea of working smarter, not harder. But how? What does that even mean? Are these gurus just calling us all dumb?

No, I don’t think they are at all. I think they’ve discovered how their minds work and used this understanding to leverage their unique abilities, propelling them forward faster in their work.

If you have not yet looked into this, then perhaps you are still working against your brain. Don’t worry though, that’s precisely what we’re going to discuss. 

Once again, I’m going to give you questionable advice.

The topic – scheduling based on task completion. Let’s say you have a task such as writing one of these articles. Do you sit down, write the whole article, and then move on with your day?

That sounds amazingly productive and focused. That’s also NOT what I do, for better or for worse. I’d like to argue for the ‘better’ side in this article.

First off – we all have different personalities and preferences. One of the most useful things you can learn is how your own mind works so that you can then leverage your specific abilities to grow yourself and your business. While there are plenty of people out there telling you what the best system is for this or that, remember that what works best for one person may not be what works best for you.

So, again, I consider this questionable advice because it works for me but it surely won’t work for everyone.

I am not quite as analytical as I once thought. While I have a background in science, my mind is far more intuitive and abstract than the concrete truths I initially sought. Through my ramen phases I have found that I am better suited as a creative than as an analyst.

With that creativity and intuition comes a tendency to have ideas pop up out of seemingly nowhere. Usually while I’m working on one thing it will inspire some other idea. This can be rather distracting and always ends up derailing my efforts to complete the task I was working on.

Now I know what this sounds like, and plenty of people would stop me here and advise me to work on my discipline to ignore these distractions in the pursuit of finishing that first task. I will respectfully disagree.

Yes, discipline is absolutely necessary, but we would be wise to never force it. You see, creativity itself is a ‘discipline’ and deserves a seat at the table too.

When one of those inspired ideas comes up, I say follow it. This inspiration comes from intuition, which is still a partly mysterious function of the brain that connects the dots behind the scenes and produces a new idea or observation seemingly out of nowhere. When that happens, it is your brain telling you that it has been working hard, unbeknownst to you, and has now produced this gem of insight for you. We would be foolish to ignore it.

This goes along with the idea of working smarter, not harder. Sure, we could push it to the side and keep pressing forward on what we were doing. But in my experience that hasn’t been what was best for the situation, or for my creativity, or even my productivity.

The productivity community seems a little over-obsessed with self-discipline at times, but again, forcing completion of something at the cost of sacrificing inspired thought is more detrimental to productivity in the end.

Like I began with though, this is what works for me. My mind does not follow schedules and refuses to color within the lines, so I find it best to follow it wherever it should wander. All of the best ideas and most successful experiences I’ve had have come from using my mind this way, enjoying the artistry of it, and letting it be free to create as it wishes.

I cannot guarantee that this method will work for you. What I can say is that if you have been forcing yourself to stick to a strict and disciplined approach to completing one thing at a time, it may be worthwhile for you to experiment with following your whims.

Case in point: This idea itself came from one of these inspired thoughts. I was working on a segment about scheduling and this whole idea just started coming out of my faceparts. After running with it, I decided that I needed to also write all of this down because this occurrence was exactly the thing I had just discussed. I sat down immediately and my fingers blurted out two solid pages of thoughts. And then, like that, I was done with it for the moment. The article still needed a bit of organization and maybe some work on the intro but I had followed this thought to the end of it’s inspired ride. That doesn’t mean that I just posted the article as it, in a sort of “I give up” fashion, rather I set it aside to work on something else, and to let everything that I had just written simmer in my mind as it chewed on all of these ideas. Not long after, about a week and a half later, I returned to finish it, once my brain was able to take a step back and do the processing work it needed to do. I did not force anything, and if I had I think that not only would it have taken longer to complete, but it would not have ended up quite as polished. This is what works for me, and if you are curious, I invite you to see if it can work for you too.

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