Working Smarter and Not Harder (Part 1) and why this advice has always pissed me off

I come from a long line of hard workers - people who worked hard for other people and usually didn't get the credit or the rewards their hard work merited.

I used to be a hard worker who worked for other people, too, and now that I am a hard worker who works for herself I have been struggling to translate my hard work situation into a smart work situation.

When a friend of mine advised me that I needed to spend more time working "on" my business rather than working "in" my business

(although I knew she was right)

it majorly irked me because what I heard was that I was not doing enough and the truth is that I cannot do anymore. I am already doing all that I can do.

(or at least this is what I told myself as I threw myself directly into that bag of Oreos while she told me exactly what I needed to hear but didn't want to listen to)

This is all alot of work and being the hard worker that I was raised to be - I do it.

But, I'm tired. I need a nap.

I am now ready to work smarter and not harder, but have an uneasy feeling that this work smarter thing is either a bunch of bull or something that could work for other people, but will not work for me.

The conversation with my annoying smart friend got me thinking about how I offer things in my business - I make 100% of my money creating things with my own two hands and selling them.

Every piece I make is made one at a time. There is no option to make something once and then replicate it in any way that is easier than producing it the first time (like a photographer can do with their photos, for example). So how will this work for me?

I once had a job where I was expected to manage people without knowing much about the jobs those people were performing - the idea behind this was that managers could not be doing non-manager work if they didn't know how to do it, since many managers, who had been "promoted through the ranks" from other positions spent a great deal of their time doing their employees work for them, putting out fires and basically "doing" the processes they were hired to manage.

At the time this seemed like a bad business model to me, although I now think there are things that can be learned from this mindset as a business owner.

So, how does this work smarter, not harder model fit into my handmade business? Are there ways to reduce my workload through better prioritizing and delegation,

(of course, this would require someone to delegate to, since Olive is about to go into winter - dangle from the arm of a chair over the heater - hibernation mode)

changing my pricing structure, creating passive income, creating recurring income, etc. These are all the things I am thinking about and going to post about over the next couple weeks. Hopefully, there will be strategies and systems that you can use to work smarter in your own business.

So, instead of getting annoyed when we are advised to work "on" our business, instead of "in" our business (this could just be me, though), we can develop the tools to shift our thinking about all of this, creating a new kind of work that creates a new kind of business - the kind of business where we get to work smarter and not harder or at the very least find some time to dangle over the heater ourselves once in a while.

Part II - The Strategy (next week)