Smart work and Common Sense.

This was one incident that one of my faculty related to me ( and others) during my training period.... It was a soft skills session (if I remember right!) and there was some discussion going on about what was the difference between smart work and hard work. Well, the faculty had posed this question to us and most of us were eager to give some incident or the other to answer her. She gave this example to define smart work.

"In the 1950's and 60's, the USA and USSR were competing in various technology spheres with each other. Space technology was also one of them. The Astronauts in the US were facing a problem of how to write while in outer space, because of the lack of gravity. They spent some $1 million or so and came up with a pen that could write in the absence of gravity. They were really proud of their efforts. Well after some time someone in the team got a doubt. How did the Astronauts of USSR manage to do it? When they found the answer, they were flabbergasted. The Astronauts in USSR used carbon pencil...!"

Well this was really funny to me at that time...but coming to think of it, I feel that it doesnt matter if we are technically strong/trained to accomplish a task or not. All we require most of the time is to have a little bit of common sense and the courage to accept simple solutions can solve complex problems!