My initial answer to this question was simple: both!
But the more I think about it, the more I realise that the relationship between the two deserves some explanation. What do we mean by working hard? And what exactly makes an approach to work “smart”?
For me, the distinction comes down to how we use our time, and what we sacrifice along the way.
What I mean by working smart
When people talk about working smart, they often mean finding shortcuts, automating tasks, or choosing a more efficient method. Those things can be useful, and certainly help to increase productivity, but my definition starts with something more fundamental: balance.
Working smart means organising your work in a way that allows you to maintain your health. You make time for sleep, exercise, healthy food, social connection, and activities that help you manage stress.
Ideally, these are ordinary parts of your life that your work fits around. You don’t have to earn them by reaching the end of an ever-growing to-do list.
I also think this creates better conditions for doing good work. If I’m rested, well fed, and able to concentrate, I’m in a better position to solve a difficult problem than if I’m exhausted and preoccupied with everything I’ve been neglecting.
Four hours worked smart can be more valuable than eight hours worked in a tired, distracted state. That won’t apply to every task or every day, but the number of hours alone tells us surprisingly little about what someone accomplished.
There is another point I want to make here, though: taking care of yourself has value even when it doesn’t make you more productive. My health matters to me beyond what it enables me to produce at work.
What I mean by working hard
In the sense I’m discussing here, working hard is mostly a function of time.
It means extending the working day. Staying late. Working through the weekend. For an employee, it might mean regularly working more hours than they’re paid for. At school or university, it might mean allowing studying to occupy almost every available moment.
Those additional hours have to come from somewhere.
Perhaps you sleep less. Perhaps exercise disappears from your routine. You stop cooking, turn down invitations, or lose the quiet time that helped you feel like yourself.
The difficulty is that each individual sacrifice can seem reasonable. Missing one workout to finish something important is hardly a catastrophe. Neither is the occasional late night.
But when there is always something important to finish, the exceptions can become your normal way of living.
A lesson I learnt through experience
I spent much of my teenage years and early adulthood working hard at school and university.
I put considerable time into my education. But it came at a cost. I became accustomed to an unhealthy lifestyle, and looking back, I believe that lifestyle contributed to the depression I experienced.
I wouldn’t reduce that period of my life to a single cause. There were several things I was struggling with. Still, I can recognise how the way I was living left too little room to look after myself.
That experience changed how I think about effort.
I can appreciate the value of my education while questioning the habits I developed in pursuing it. I don’t want to carry those habits through the rest of my life simply because I once associated them with achievement.
More hours, but what are they worth?
One problem with measuring hard work through time is that time is easy to see.
You can see who arrived early and who stayed late. It’s harder to judge the quality of someone’s concentration, whether they chose a sensible approach, or whether they solved a problem before it became a bigger one.
As a result, it can be tempting to treat presence as evidence of productivity.
But an extra hour at the desk might produce useful progress, or it might involve repeatedly making and correcting mistakes because you’re too tired to notice them. Sometimes the sensible decision is to stop and return with a clearer mind.
This also depends on the work. Some tasks require a person to be physically present for a particular length of time. A shift cannot always be compressed into a few highly focused hours, and a colleague still needs someone to take over before they can leave.
My point is that we should examine what those hours demand and what they actually achieve, rather than assume that more must always be better.
Balance isn’t always an individual choice
It would be easy to say, “Just work smart,” as though everyone has complete control over their working conditions.
They don’t.
Some workplaces expect constant availability. Some jobs involve fixed shifts, unpredictable demands, or workloads that leave little room for flexibility. Financial responsibilities can also make it difficult to turn down additional hours or leave an unhealthy environment.
In those circumstances, advice about personal balance can feel detached from reality. A person might understand exactly what they need and still lack the freedom to make it happen.
Employers have a role here. If the workload routinely requires people to sacrifice their health, encouraging them to practise self-care in their remaining free time does very little to address the problem.
A culture that supports working smart has to make room for it in practice.
Is there still a place for working hard?
I think there is.
There are things worth putting substantial time and effort into. Learning a difficult skill, completing an important project, or helping build a company can involve periods when you consciously choose to do more.
I care deeply about making the startup I work for successful. I understand the motivation to keep going when the work matters to you.
But I also want to remain honest about the trade-off. Enjoying the work doesn’t make me immune to the cost of neglecting everything else.
For me, a demanding period should prompt questions: why am I doing this? What am I giving up? How long do I expect it to last? And will I actually make room to recover afterwards?
Those questions become particularly important when “just a busy period” keeps extending indefinitely.
The approach I want to take
So, would I still answer “both”?
Yes, with some conditions. I want working smart to be the foundation: protecting the parts of my life that keep me healthy, while using my working time thoughtfully. Within that, I’m willing to put in substantial effort towards something I care about.
What I want to avoid is relying on extra hours to compensate for an approach that leaves me increasingly depleted.
This connects closely to how I think about success. Health, freedom, and inner peace are part of the life I’m trying to build. I need to consider them while I’m pursuing my goals, rather than assume I can reclaim them once the work is done.
I’ve already experienced some of the cost of forgetting that. I’d like to put what I learnt into practice.
When you say you’ve been working hard, what has that meant for the rest of your life?