“Work smarter, not harder,” they say. The problem is they rarely ever tell us what that means. It’s ill-defined.
So I’ll give you an example of a way you can start doing this. And by the way, this works no matter what you’re doing. It could be work, it could be your business, it could be something with a hobby you’re involved in.
Sawdust.
Sawdust used to be considered a waste product. It was not thought of as something useful.
But now, many of the products we interact with daily—particleboard, fuel, pellets, and others—use sawdust.
It was a byproduct. Something already there. Not useful, until it was.
Do you have any sawdust lying around? Something you could turn into something else?
Maybe:
- Ideas you use in your business you could package up and sell to teach others.
- Processes you use to run your home that others would benefit from.
- Things you do in one context (like work) that would translate well into another context (a hobby)
I recently wrote a blog post called “In Context.”
The idea for that was a byproduct. It came to me because I realized that most business advice is given in a vacuum. It doesn’t consider the larger context.
But in my ministry work, a primary factor is the context! If you read a Bible verse in a vacuum, you will be in a world of trouble.
One way to be more productive, then, is to think about what you’re already doing and how it applies to other areas of your life.