10 Effective Shortcuts In Life
You've heard it before, right? There are no shortcuts to success in life. So why then do some people achieve it so much faster than others? Well, the reality is life is full of shortcuts. And here is a list of our favorites. Welcome to ALUX first step.
Play the most favorable game. You know how a bottle of water at the airport costs like three times as much as it does in a grocery store? Well, it's the same with your time and energy and where you decide to deploy them. You see, most of the time the game that you play is more important than how good you are at it. It doesn't matter if you're a great engineer if you live in a place where there's no need for engineers. Just like it doesn't matter how great you are in an industry that's slowly going away or is being replaced entirely. It's smarter to join a game where the odds are in your favor. It might not be the flashiest or most popular, but if it's where your strengths shine, success will be easier to grab there.
Stay away from sinking ships and take your time to study the playing field.
Play by the book. Look, we've got thousands of years documented as humanity. There's really no stone left unturned. Nothing has really changed that much. What merchants did back in ancient Greece is no different than what merchants do today. It's just the tools are different. So there's really no secret formula you haven't found out yet or a secret strategy that you need to figure out. You can literally copy paste what others have done successfully, and there is a good chance it will work for you as well, at least as long as you stick to it long enough.
Think about it like cooking. While we've now got modern gadgets like air fryers and instant pots, the basic rules of cooking, like balancing out your flavors and how long it takes to cook a chicken breast, those remain unchanged. Similarly, in any field, there are foundational rules and best practices. These are like recipes for success that experienced professionals have followed and refined over time. Whether it's in business, art, science, or sports, these fundamental strategies guide you toward achieving your goals more efficiently and effectively.
It's tempting to believe you'll invent a groundbreaking new approach, but chances are someone's already thought of it. So the shortcut is this: use the hard work of others to make your work easier. Programmers should be really familiar with this concept already.
Play it safe. Contrary to popular belief, highly successful people are extremely safe with their resources. You might think that the shortcut is taking a huge risk for an even bigger reward, but it's just not the case. The shortcut is freeing up mental space by not doing dumb shit and losing sleep over it. You see, the reality is most risk taking is for fools and impatient people. No one in their right mind would jeopardize their resources for quick gains. And this is different from making calculated predictions. You see, a risk is something where you hope that something good will happen, whereas a calculated prediction is something that's got a high probability of success based on facts and data. So don't get them twisted.
Keep it really, really simple. While most people are busy trying to figure out the most complicated and convoluted business strategy known to mankind, something that incorporates A.I., cloud solutions, solar energy, and fairy dust, others make a ton of money out of food trucks and car washes. Successful entrepreneurs have very simple businesses and successful investors have very safe portfolios. They aren't reinventing the wheel but rather delivering consistent value with a model that's easy to understand and manage. The simpler the better.
Find the like-minded people. The greatest shortcut in life is to join forces with others who have the same goals and aspirations as you do. And if you can't find them, make the network yourself; and others who will join this community of like-minded people becomes your stronghold. It's a space for exchanging ideas, seeking advice, and offering support. As you grow together, learn together, and work together, you'll find that the road to success becomes a lot less bumpy. A group of people with shared goals moves incredibly fast compared to a single individual. Everyone's learning is multiplied and you can leverage each other's resources.
And the next level of this is the next point. Mentor match. The next level of finding like-minded people is to find someone who already has done what you're trying to do and emulate that person. And know, okay, this person is not Elon Musk. Identifying your mentor match involves introspection and research, so reflect on your values, goals, and preferred working style and seek out mentors who not only embody success but also resonate with these aspects. Look for individuals whose career trajectories inspire you, whose stories echo with your dreams, and whose advice aligns with your principles. When the match is right, mentorship becomes more than a transfer of knowledge. It transforms into a dialog, a partnership where both mentor and mentee learn and grow together. A mentor match is not about finding a teacher but discovering a partner for your journey of personal and professional development. Someone who not only shows you the ropes but also understands and supports your unique vision and approach.
Fast Track Learning. The reality is you cannot afford to take years to acquire knowledge. It's impractical and it might actually leave you behind. This is where fast track learning comes into play. It's all about being strategic and focused. It's identifying and absorbing the core components of any skill or subject that is crucial for you. Fast track learning has essentially two steps: One, you study the skill from all the resources you can find, whether that's courses, books, podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, and so on. And two, you immediately put it into practice.
You see, most of the time you don't need the whole bulk of a particular skill. You just need a certain part. You don't need to go through a digital marketing degree to quickly learn how to run ads for your business. The same way, you don't need to know how to build a car in order to change a tire. It's extremely efficient to get into the habit of learning the things you need to learn as you do them.
Decision Matrix. Now a decision matrix is a straightforward tool that helps you to make tough choices with confidence. There are multiple versions of this, with the most basic one being the pro and con list. But the point remains the same. You build a system which does the decision making for you after you put it into place. And how is this a shortcut? Well, it actually takes a lot of mental power to make even the most basic of decisions, like what to have for breakfast. If you automate the whole process and make sure it always makes decisions in your best interest, not only do you free up mental space, but you also minimize the possibility of making bad calls. And that's a win-win, my friend.
Feedback loop. Find a way to get feedback as soon as possible and implement it as soon as possible. When people get personal trainers, they don't do it because they don't know what a push-up looks like. They do it so they can have someone to instantly correct them when they go off course. The most efficient people are the ones who can test and reiterate fast, and the feedback loop allows you to do exactly that. Now, how this looks depends on what you're doing. Maybe you've got a group of friends who can critique your work. Or maybe it's something you can release into the market and get feedback in that way. The point is good and quick feedback is extremely valuable. Your mum might say you're the prettiest flower in the garden, but you know, maybe your Tinder analytics might suggest otherwise.
Priority Sorting. Learn to identify and focus on tasks that offer the highest potential return on investment for time and effort. If you take a hard look at what a day in your life looks like, most things are not that important or they don't amount to anything meaningful. It's just busy work to stay or look busy. But imagine you only have 2 hours every day to work on your thing. You don't get any second longer than that, and you need to fit everything that's important into that time slot. You see, all of a sudden all of that fluff doesn't matter anymore. We as humans have this interesting ability to get stuff done when the clock is ticking.
Steve Jobs once said, "I choose to hire the lazy person to do the hard work because the lazy person will find the easy way to do it." When you learn to prioritize only the things that actually matter and the ones that have the most impact, your results will multiply. You see, shortcuts are basically just a way of doing things more efficiently and faster, but we try to avoid using the exact term of shortcut so we don't undermine the hard work that's always present. But make no mistake elixir, there will always be a faster and easier, more efficient way to do anything.
We'll see you back here next time, my friend. Take care.