When I was a student, I thought the secret to success is
hard work. When I first started working, I had a colleague who had just
returned from the US .
He had a master’s degree in engineering from a US
university and had worked there for about eight years. He told me that you can
succeed with hard work in most countries but in India
you need an additional quality, you need to be cunning.
Later on, I realized he was correct. I came across people
who took the credit for other peoples work and when some thing went wrong they
tried to shift the blame on someone else.
One day, I had to meet the Chief Engineer of the Post and
Telegraph Office at Palakkad. The office was an eight storey building, the
tallest in Palakkad at that time. I arrived at about 1 pm and found that he had left for lunch. His office was
on the top floor; all the others were literally working under him. I took the
lift down and waited outside the building. Soon I saw an elderly distinguished
man heading for the lift. I thought, he must be the Chief Engineer. I waited a few minutes, for him to leave. Then, I took the lift up. When I entered
his room, he was already seated. On seeing me, he stood up and asked me to take
a seat. He was in his fifties and I was in my twenties. I could not understand
why he had to show me so much respect. I was trying to sell him a product but
soon he started talking about Japan
and how that country had made so much progress. I told him that they are a hard
working people. He did not agree with me. He said some of his relatives had
visited Japan
and brought back some electronic gadgets. He asked me whether anybody in India
can make some thing like that with hard work. He said what is required is
intelligence and not hard work. He went on to say that if a person does hard
work for long hours, he is going to fall sick. After talking for some time, I
got up to leave. He stood up and bid me farewell.
I thought about it. Are some people just born intelligent or is it something we can work on. Maybe there is physical hard work and
mental hard work. Just like physical hard work builds muscles, maybe mental
hard work improves intelligence. Everybody cannot
be a Mr. Universe and everybody cannot be an Einstein. Maybe you just have to work with what you have. If you use your intelligence at work and find ways to make work easier, you are doing smart work.I think smart work is definitely
better than hard work.
