Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not here to tell you to “work less.” I’m here to suggest there’s a smarter way to use the same effort – one that doesn’t end with you contemplating a new identity halfway through your third coffee. Somewhere between the Industrial Revolution and our latest round of performance reviews, we confused exhaustion with achievement.
Maybe once upon a time, working hard made sense – probably around 1884, when a small college in Wisconsin coined the phrase “Work hard, play hard, pray hard.” Different era. Steam engines. Top hats. Cholera. If your biggest distraction was a passing horse, sure, working hard was revolutionary. But 140 years later, with every app on your phone fighting for your dopamine like hyenas at a buffet, maybe it’s time we upgraded the operating system – and considered a different approach to working smart vs working hard.
It’s not soft to rethink how you work. It’s strategic. It’s about skipping the all-you-can-eat buffet version of work – where you load your plate with everything, eat nothing properly, and then spend the rest of the week hating yourself. Instead, learn to order a single great meal – something with taste, something that doesn’t require an emotional defibrillator afterwards.
That’s what I meant in my piece on the Four-Day Work Week: it’s not about slacking off; it’s about not dying for your calendar. Because sustainable performance – the heart of working smart vs working hard – isn’t about speed. It’s about alignment.
And that’s where this story begins, on the banks of the Zambezi, holding a cold Bohlingers Lager, having a come-to-Jesus moment. It wasn’t that I hated hard work; I was just tired of how hard it was to move even an inch once I reached the upper gears of my career. Turns out, I’d been trying to hit 400 km/h in a car that physically couldn’t do it.
The Bugatti Lesson: A Case for Career Alignment
Back in 2019, when Top Gear still roared across TV and Jeremy Clarkson hadn’t yet been permanently banned from polite society, James May got to drive the Bugatti Veyron. Stay with me, this isn’t about to turn into a motoring column, but the metaphor’s too good to ignore (I’ll drop the video in at the end).
The Veyron is less “car” and more “physics experiment with leather seats.” It’s what happens when a group of engineers collectively decide, “What if we ignored common sense entirely?” Sixteen cylinders. Four turbochargers. About the same horsepower as a small developing nation. Top speed: 407 km/h – fast enough to arrive somewhere before you’ve even decided to leave.
To get there, it needs 270 horsepower just to reach 250 km/h, and then another 730 horsepower to claw through the final wall of air trying to stop it. That’s like needing three extra brains just to finish a sudoku. At full speed, it drinks five litres of fuel per minute, and after twelve glorious minutes the tank’s dry and the tyres – each worth more than my first apartment – start melting into despair.
It’s obscene. Beautiful. Ridiculous. A love letter to over-engineering.
And here’s the kicker: if you are a Veyron – and your wiring, rhythm, and design are made for that level – you will get there. It’ll hurt, you’ll need new tyres, and your eyebrows will probably never recover, but you’ll do it.
If, however, you’re a VW Citi Golf, you can throw in the exact same effort and physics will simply laugh in your face. You’ll redline at 180 and wonder why the universe hates you. It doesn’t – you’re just built for something different.
That’s the truth behind working smart vs working hard: it’s not about effort; it’s about fit. You can burn the same fuel and go nowhere, or tune your career for the road that suits your design.
Translating the Physics of Effort into Sustainable Performance
| Veyron Challenge | Workplace Parallel |
|---|---|
| Needs 1 000 HP to hit top speed | You’re burning through mental fuel trying to force output at an unsustainable pace |
| $10 000 tyres | You’re paying emotional and physical costs that don’t need to be that high |
| Constantly adjusts aerodynamics | You’re endlessly “optimising” instead of finding actual flow |
| Needs 9 km of straight track | You’re chasing progress in environments that don’t suit your design |
| Can only sustain 12 minutes at top speed | You can sprint for a while, but not forever – effectiveness fades without recovery |
What most people call working hard is really just fighting drag. Every Slack ping, every “quick sync,” every spreadsheet tab you forgot to close – that’s drag. You’re not underperforming; you’re just trying to power through a hurricane with a hairdryer.
Flow, as psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi described it, happens when challenge perfectly matches ability – that sweet spot where effort feels effortless. That’s the physics of working smart vs working hard in action: matching energy to purpose instead of brute-forcing results.
Shifting Gears Isn’t Easy
Knowing this and doing something about it are two entirely different beasts. Changing gears hurts. If you’ve been flooring it for years in the wrong lane, letting off the pedal feels like failure. There’s ego, habit, and identity wrapped up in the noise of the engine. And if you do take that exit, don’t expect a neat little sign that says “Growth Ahead.” What you’ll find instead is mud.
The Weight of Expectation
A close friend once said something that’s stuck with me for years. He was going through a rough patch, constantly dragged to those glittering corporate conferences where everyone pretends to enjoy cold chicken and PowerPoints. But it wasn’t the events themselves – it was everything after them. The dinners. The drinks. The after-parties that bled into 4 a.m. – followed by a two-hour nap and a repeat performance the next day. He was always the first to arrive and somehow the last to leave, night after night. And he was broken.
When I told him, “You don’t have to do that,” he said simply: “But there’s an expectation that I will because that is what I’ve always done.” That one line hit like a freight train.
At some point, you have to ask yourself: is that who you want to be? Does it serve you? Or are you just playing along with a role someone else wrote for you? Because aligning with expectation is passive. To get where you actually want to go, you’ve got to make active decisions. And yes, some people will fall away. Some systems will crack. That’s okay – better a few potholes than an entire wrong highway.
The Trench: Where Growth and Happiness Collide
Real growth doesn’t happen on the open road. It happens in the trench – the messy, muddy, soul-rearranging place where you take everything apart and see what’s still worth keeping. It’s where you stop repainting the same car and finally rebuild the engine.
I wrote more about this in Growth vs Happiness – because the trench is where we learn that progress doesn’t always feel good in the moment. Sometimes growth means dismantling comfort to build capacity.
The trench is hard. But it’s a hard you choose. And when you finally crawl out, covered in grit and a faint smell of burnt clutch, and climb into the vehicle you were always meant to drive, the only thing that’ll bug you is that you didn’t do it sooner.
Reframing Success: Your Design, Your Drive
The Veyron doesn’t apologise for needing perfect conditions to reach top speed, and neither should you. We’re not all built the same way.
I’m a Lion chronotype: I wake up at dawn like a lunatic, peak at breakfast, and slowly turn into mashed potato by sunset. I’m also a Type 2 on the Enneagram, followed closely by 7 and 8 – which means I’m wired to help, connect, and lead with energy, but I also have to watch my limits. Pair that with a Commander (ENTJ-A) profile on 16 Personalities, and you start to see why structure, momentum, and meaning matter so much in how I work.
When I honour those rhythms, I’m unstoppable. When I fight them, I need caffeine, therapy, and divine intervention.
If you don’t know what your design looks like, start there. Try 16 Personalities or Gallup CliftonStrengths – they’ll show you what kind of engine you’re running and why it keeps misfiring after lunch.
I’m ADD-wired: too much sameness and my brain parks itself in neutral. Variety isn’t a luxury; it’s fuel. When I ignore that, I stall. When I honour it, I fly.
That’s what working smart vs working hard really means, not doing less, but doing what fits. Less proving. More tuning.
Time for Reflection
At some point, you’ve got to stop flooring it and check the dashboard.
Ask yourself:
- Does it give you flow – that easy hum where time disappears, or does it feel like driving uphill with the handbrake on?
- Does it give you a real sense of achievement, or are you just ticking boxes and collecting applause from people you wouldn’t invite to your braai?
- Are you doing it to prove something, or because you’ve actually chosen it? There’s a world of difference between validation and direction.
- Does your current environment fit the road you’re built for, or are you a mountain goat trying to merge onto a freeway?
- Do you feel safe enough to grow, or are you gripping the steering wheel so tightly that your knuckles now have their own blood pressure?
- What could you let go of that’s slowing you down? (Spoiler: it’s probably the emotional roof rack full of guilt, obligation, and that one WhatsApp group you’re too polite to leave.)
- Are you being honest about what’s working, and what isn’t? Because polishing the same hubcap doesn’t make the engine run better.
Maybe it’s not about pushing harder. Maybe it’s about physics.
You can spend decades upgrading the wrong machine – or finally accept that the problem isn’t your effort.
It’s the track you’re on.
And if all of this still sounds like too much “hard work,” that’s fine, you can keep working hard. Just know you may never find out what your engine’s really capable of. You’ll only ever work hard. You’ll never know what working smart actually feels like.
Working smart means designing your life like a well-tuned engine: refuelling regularly, cutting unnecessary drag, and taking corners at your own pace. That’s what I realised on the banks of the Zambezi – sometimes the smartest move isn’t to push harder, but to change vehicles altogether.
If you’re not sure what vehicle you’re driving, start by learning how you’re wired. Tools like 16 Personalities or Gallup CliftonStrengths can help you understand the engine beneath your ambition – and maybe, just maybe, help you find the track that finally fits.
If this all feels overwhelming, start with a Titanic Diagnostic – it’s far easier than rebuilding the engine yourself. And if you need a co-driver, I’m only a chat away.
One response
Hey Murrels. Very insightful and many aspects / characteristics mentioned that I can identify with.
Well written.
John.