What are some uncommon ways to work smarter instead of harder?

time management performs a key role in so doing, so just invest some of your time in time management so that it becomes easier for you later.

• be simple
• use whatever you get
• good plan today better than perfect one next week

If you know how motivation works, you will know it comes in bursts and waves. It’s not possible to maintain a hundred% full motivated state every single second. Hence, you need to create/leverage on your environment to maintain your flow. Examples are your physical environment, people you hang out with, your routine and communities you are a part of.

empower your employee and you feel free.

Working harder can be an easy habit to slip into, though. Sometimes it’s hard to switch off at the end of the day, or to take time out on the weekend and stop thinking about work.

1. Take more breaks: Respecting our natural attention spans

2. Take naps: One of the most efficient ways to boost your brain function

3. Spend time in nature

4. Move around and work in blocks

5. Limit your to-do list

6. Measure your results, not your time

7. Build “getting ready to work” routines

8. Track what you’re wasting time on

9. Build habits to help you stop working

10. Exercise

11. Believe that you can do it

First of all, I don't think that the ways to work smarter can be "uncommon"; Nope; most of the time people are aware of them but reluctant to go against the status quo. 

Below is a list of  some important techniques/ways by following which one can work smarter instead of harder:

• Get clear on the objective: Everything has an objective. It’s just a matter of whether you know it or not. What is the end objective you are looking for? The people who don’t know the objective of what they are doing, are the ones who waste the most time. If you know your objective, you can be laser-focused and cut right to the chase. The clearer you are, the better. 
• Create a vision: Now that you know your objective, what is your vision? See the objective as your direction, and your vision as your destination. Knowing your objective lets you know where to travel in, while knowing your vision helps you charge forward. 
• Take the eighty/twenty route: There are always many different ways to achieve the same outcome. Eighty/twenty route refers to the route that takes the least effort but gives you the maximum results. What’s the most effective route that will get you from where you are to where you want to be? Take that path. 
• Go for high impact items: There are endless number of things you can do to achieve a goal. Go for the most important tasks – the ones that cause the highest impact. For example in school, I would not attend lectures if I felt they would not make a difference to my learning. As I develop my blog, I concentrate on the key tasks that make the most difference such as writing high quality content for my readers and spreading the word about my articles. 
• Create structures to maintain your flow: If you know how motivation works, you will know it comes in bursts and waves. It’s not possible to maintain a hundred% full motivated state every single second. Hence, you need to create/leverage on your environment to maintain your flow. Examples are your physical environment, people you hang out with, your routine and communities you are a part of. 
• Stop being a perfectionist: Being a perfectionist isn’t all that perfect if it prevents you from achieving more. Release the perfectionist mindset. Stop obsessing about the details and specifics; they often take care of themselves.  
• Learn from others: There are great resources, smart people, direct opportunities and top books around you all the time. Learn to make use of them. When I started out in my personal development industry and with my blog, I read materials from the experts and consulted the top bloggers, which helped me gain important insights immediately. Even today, I continue to do so as I expand my work. There is never a stop to how much you can learn from others. 
• If it works, stick to it: If there is already a success formula that’s working, then reapply that formula. There’s no need to innovate or reinvent the wheel for the sake of it. Innovate only if there’s value in doing so.
• Automate: Is there any way to automate your tasks, especially labor intensive ones? It can be the simplest things such as setting up filters in your emails and using more functional applications that get the job done better. With The Personal Excellence Blog, you can automate several processes such as filtering specific emails to respective labels, having your new articles automatically feeded to Twitter/Facebook, and having automatic thumbnails for your articles. That saves a lot of time so you can get right to creating quality content for readers. 
• Delegate: For the lower impact items that need to get done (such as administrative activities), delegate them to someone else. If you are running a business, hire someone to take care of them.
• Review regularly: Do a regular review of what you have done in the past week and the corresponding results. Then analyze the things that are working and the things that aren’t working. With the former, keep them; with the latter, remove them. Very soon you will have a very streamlined list of things that work.