My father summarized his work philosophy in four words.
There are no shortcuts.
He meant it. He lived it.
Somewhere along the way, part of it became mine.
Every week I publish because I refused the shortcut.
I could hand a machine everything I’ve written and ask for 600 words in my voice.
That’s the easy way.
I take the hard way because the clarity I walk away with comes only from the struggle to get there.
So I believe him. I still do.
My son recently told me he’s been working very hard on a project in one of his classes. I thoroughly respected his commitment to the hard work. I saw “no shortcuts” being passed down to another generation.
His effort was enormous. The progress was little.
The deadline kept coming.
I recognized it all too well.
It’s not right yet.
I need more time.
I need more effort.
I know that voice.
It sits next to me when I build a system that worked perfectly in my head and fights me for weeks on the screen.
It sits with me at 5:30 a.m. when a draft is nearly finished, yet I keep refining every detail.
I told him I recognize it. The desire to match what’s in your mind exactly to what you envision on paper.
Then I gave him the other half.
Energy and effort have a deadline.
As a general rule, you can hold yourself to a high standard.
But you still have to know when to just do the thing and move on.
The words caught on “good enough.”
Because I knew it could be better.
I know the feeling of stamping your name on a piece of work when you feel the disconnect between what’s in your mind and what’s on the page.
The rule still holds.
Sometimes the learning just takes effort.
Sometimes, just when you’re ready to give up or move on, you were that close to the solution.
That’s where the tool in my hands gets interesting.
AI can push me either direction.
When I’m coasting, I ask it to argue with me, find the hole, make the thinking harder. When I’m stuck in my own loop, I ask for the answer and get moving again.
Both are legitimate.
The danger is mistaking one for the other.
Some answers I need so I can keep going.
Others I need to earn, because the earning is the learning.
Hand those off, and I’ve outsourced the thinking instead of incorporating it.
That’s the shortcut my father warned me about.
The hard part is that I don’t always know which is which in the moment.
Nobody hands you the gauge.
The only question I have is the one I ask myself at 5:30.
Am I still learning here?
Maybe my father was right about shortcuts and silent about the long way around.
One version of “no shortcuts” keeps you on the road. Another keeps you circling the same block, proud of the miles.
It’s Saturday morning as I write this. The piece is mostly saying what I meant. Not exactly.
I’m publishing it anyway.
Good enough this week, because the standard lives in the whole body of work, and next Saturday I get another rep.
I’m still learning to tell them apart.
And my son is trying to figure it out for himself, too.