Maybe you have seen this in school: Some students studying nearly all the time but they just pass their exams, while some other may spend much less time on their books but do much better in exams. How could this happen? People used to think that hard work is the only way to success. But now they understand that smart work can make them success, too.
Hard workers don't mind working for long hours, while smart workers always think of several different answers to these questions. "Why should I suffer this?" "Isn't there a better way to do this?" Thanks to these people, we can use computers instead of the abacus now. Progress in every field is the direct result of "try to find a better way" by smart workers.
There was a large soap factory in Japan. Once it received an unusual letter from someone who complained that there was no soap in the soapbox he bought.
How could empty soapbox go out of the factory? The engineers checked the producing and packing. The producing was fine, but in about one in ten thousand cases, the packing machines let an empty soapbox go. There was no need to spend a lot of money repairing the machine for such a small problem. The engineer soon worked out a solution. He put a large X-ray(X射线) machine and two large computers to find out the empty soapbox. After teaching the workers how to use it, he sat down in his seat, exhausted(精疲力尽).
"Sir, we could have solved the problems in a much simpler and cheaper way." a worker said.
"Really? How?"
"We can put a huge fan(电扇) near the packing machine. The wind coming from the fan will blow away the empty boxes, leaving the other boxes with soap. There would be no need for an X-ray machine, two computers, and operating by workers."
See, this is smart work. In order to succeed, we should not only work hard like the engineers, but also think smart like the workers.
