Does passion make you work harder and smarter? I don’t think so. I think passion makes you want to work harder and smarter. But there is way more to working harder and smarter than passion. The real problem with this cliché is that it gets tossed around so casually as an answer to all business problems and yet, it has so little to do with how a business needs to operate.
Many people believe work balance is really the goal and so they changed the phrase to “work smarter, not harder.” What’s the difference?
Luckily someone took the challenge of finding a clear answer… UC Berkeley professor Morten Hansen looked at 200 academic papers, interviewed 120 experts, ran a pilot study on 300 subjects and built a framework which he then tested on 5,000 participants from various industries and backgrounds.
He found seven behaviors that made up 66% of the difference in how people performed. (By comparison, standard metrics like education, age and hours worked were only responsible for 10% combined.) His new book, “Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More” outlines these seven.
We’re going to look at three of my favorites so that we can get hard, smart work done — and maybe even achieve that mythical “work-life balance” unicorn everyone is always talking about.
Do Less — then Obsess
Everyone agrees we need to quit trying to accomplish 9,000 things at once. But when Hansen looked at the data, he found that this was only half the solution. Top performers focus on fewer goals — but they also obsess like crazy over them. This is a really hard one for me. I am very good at obsessing but if I am honest, I obsess over all of the hundreds of opportunities I think BioZyme has. I am going to take this advice to heart and pick three for 2022.
Use “The Learning Loop”
Deliberate practice seems straightforward in sports, music or chess. But how do you do it in the workplace? Hansen offers some clear steps:
- Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.
- Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.
- Just like a baseball player might try to improve a specific element of their game (batting, fielding or running), you want to break down what goes into good social media and set a goal. “I’m going to learn Promoboxx to help with my social media
marketing.”
- Get feedback. After the Facebook post is made, ask people how you did and what you can do to improve it
Follow Passion & Purpose
Top performers didn’t merely “follow their passion.” They also had a sense of purpose in what they did. This combo produced huge results. It boosted energy levels and increased the amount of effort they were able to exert. Hansen found that at least 10% of people in every arena and role examined had passion and purpose.
Purpose is about creating value for others in a way that is personally meaningful to you. Like passion, this is less about the actual tasks you perform and more about how you frame them. Shoveling elephant poop does not seem terribly meaningful. And when looked at in that limited frame, it isn’t. But when you love animals, it can be deeply meaningful — as a study of zookeepers revealed. In a 2009 study of zookeepers, researchers found that some saw cleaning cages and feeding animals as a filthy, meritless job, while others saw it as a moral duty to protect and provide proper care for the animals. Same job, different feelings of purpose.
Summing It Up
If we choose to implement these three behaviors, I think we will all be able to work smarter which will naturally convert to working harder and we will do it all with passion and purpose without even knowing it. Isn’t doing something so naturally you don’t even know you are doing it the real secret to work and life? One last thought. If doing all three of these behaviors is too much for you right now; 23% of the difference Hansen found in how people performed came from one behavior – Do Less then Obsess. Here’s permission to passionately obsess!
