The slang "Life no balance" is one of the words used on the street when effort doesn't justify the result. It's funny how someone who put in little effort ends up becoming a champion whereas someone who gave their all ends up with nothing. A lot of factors can be the reason for the unjustified result whether for small or big effort and in some cases, it is just natural. Some things happen naturally but the world is at a stage where people don't believe things happen naturally anymore so I wouldn't want to emphasize much on that.
Many times, we feel bitter about our hard work not giving the result we want forgetting that the world has to an extent moved from the era of hard work to smart work but regardless, it hurts to put in lots of effort and not get the required results.
It is funny how we only complain about unjustified results when we put in so much effort and get poor results. How about times when we put in very low effort and got good results?
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For some time, I was supervising the promotion of a new product my company launched. The sales was struggling so they came up with the idea of taking the products to the street, interacting with people and convincing them to buy the product.
Things started well but along the line, a sales target was given to us. I tried to make my superiors understand that imposing the product on people won't work because it was nowhere near the basic need of humans but they wouldn't listen.
I didn't have a choice but to do what they wanted and after the first week, the pressure started coming in badly and it got to a point where my job was at stake.
I thought about it deeply and realised that hard work won't give me the needed result so I upped my game. To get more money from the task added to my job, I discussed an incentive plan with my superiors for the promoters and they agreed to it because they were desperate.
Then, I had 12 vans and the total number of packs that must be sold daily by all of them was 480 and a pack has 50 units of the product in it. Since I knew doing that figure daily wasn't possible, I went in search of mega distributors who could buy at least 65% of our targets weekly and luckily for me, I got about six of them in different markets.
Once I get the stock at the beginning of the week, I give the vans half and take the other half to these distributors. We weren't selling all though but we were doing enough to help us get the incentive. My superiors were happy about the sales growth and it got to a point, I wasn't doing anything because I was able to confuse more market women to become our distributors. I had a juicy offer for them that didn't contradict the company policies and thanks to the incentive.
Every Monday, I just tell the drivers where to take the goods after speaking to the distributors over the weekend and find somewhere to relax around the company premises. Things went on like that for me till the company was done with the promotion, everything went smoothly.
Smart work made that possible and my little effort gave me a fantastic result.
I have times when my efforts equal the result and that's one of the reasons why no matter how much effective smart work can be, I don't underestimate the power of hard work.
My higher institution days were no fun, it was all about struggles, the financial backup was not there and it really affected me. My department HOD knew me by force by fire and at a point, whenever I show up at his office door, he knows what I came for.
I was always late with my tuition payment and things might be different if I knew a platform like Hive.
We usually don't need the examination docket that stands as a clearance into the examination hall for the first two papers but after those two, getting into the exam hall without the docket was war.
My first experience was terrific, the invigilator pitied me after many pleas. The woman told me to get a clearance from my HOD and on getting there the man wasted more than 45 minutes of my time but who am I to complain?
Throughout my time in the school, I went through a lot or should I say a lot went through me?
Invigilators will sometimes insist on calling the HOD directly and there are times, they requested more than the HOD's signature. Most times, I usually have about only an hour and sometimes less to do the papers but due to hard work, I never failed an exam or got poor grades in any.
I always studied hard and because of that, I find many of the examination questions easy. There are days I submit my answer script and even the examiners will be like didn't you just get in now?
Of all my experience, I learned that regardless of what you are expecting as a result, putting in your best is mandatory because at a point when smart work doesn't do the job, hard work with come in for us.
Nothing is certain about life and even times when the result is poor despite the hard work, we should never give up. Because hard work doesn't pay today doesn't mean it won't tomorrow, it is better to put in our best than to start wishing we did in the future.
Thanks for reading.