In a recent email exchange with a customer, I noticed his email signature included the quote “Short cuts make long delays.” It caught my attention, so I did a little digging and learned it comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo stated his preference to cut straight across country, and Pippin tried to convince him that the local countryside was too difficult to traverse and warns “short cuts make long delays.”
Shortcuts are everywhere and tempting. We all take them. We have shortcut keys on our computer keyboard. Shortcut icons on our smartphones. We all want things to be easier. With everything on our plates and only so much time, using shortcuts can provide time and attention we can distribute elsewhere. Taking shortcuts is in our human nature. It’s instinctual; we are hard-wired to want to do the least amount of work as possible to get the greatest reward. Evolution didn’t always favor the hardest working members of our species, it favored the most effective, which many times meant shortcuts (and luck). Shortcuts aren’t inherently bad, but they can foster false expectations.
The paradox of shortcuts is they tend to be the longer way to do things. We hunt for quick fixes, hoping to bypass the necessary effort. Sometimes the search for a shortcut wastes time. Then the work piles up and grows more overwhelming. What seems like a clever detour becomes a long, winding road. In the end, we face the same task, now urgent and sown with stress. In reality, shortcuts can often lead to disappointments rather than quick success.
Shortcuts can be derived from laziness to use as minimal effort as needed. They often mask procrastination. Unfortunately, this creates an opportunity for negative results and possibly severe consequences. Shortcuts can be dangerous and lead to serious accidents. My wife sees this firsthand at a chemical manufacturing plant where she is responsible for implementing and preaching safety. Even though no one comes to work expecting to get injured, the desire to take the easy way out is a human tendency. Shortcuts must be banned in these environments.
I have seen shortcuts in the ‘white-collar’ business world, where leadership attempts to “buy” a new culture of improved productivity, quality, morale, and customer service with promotional posters, third party ‘success’ training, and external incentives. When these methods don’t work, they look for other orchestrated techniques that possibly will – all the time ignoring and violating the natural principles and processes on which to build a high performance, high trust culture. Shortcuts will produce a low-trust climate.
Over time ‘shortcuts’ earned a bad reputation for not producing long-lasting results, so they have been rebranded as ‘Hacks.’ The word hack was coined by computer-science students at MIT during the ’60s. Computers were expensive to run, so a programming shortcut saved time and money. Sixty years later, video games and the digital world have normalized the word hack into our daily vocabulary. Hacks are gimmicks to reduce the time, effort and stress it takes to achieve the desired results. But there is no way to shortcut complex things. There is no substitute for time and effort. Hacks only work for simple tasks.
The key to any long-term success is to take the necessary steps to progress steadily rather than skip any of them. There are no shortcuts to success. The path is rarely a straight line. It’s a winding road with detours, roadblocks, and hurdles. Success is the result of hard work, persistence, and the courage to keep going despite the challenges that come. It’s a journey that demands a higher standard, not the easy way out. Take the time and energy to perform tasks correctly.
I can vow for there being no shortcuts hiking the Appalachian Trail or walking 50 miles. “A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step” and can only be taken one step at a time. There is no elevator to success; we must take the stairs. There is no shortcut to farming. We will reap what we sow. Filling the tube of toothpaste via a shortcut, will result in air gaps and nothing coming out when squeezed.
In Christianity, the idea that shortcuts make long delays is based on the belief that God works in people according to his own plan, and we should not try to rush his timeline. Bob Goff has a great quote about shortcuts and our faith, “Don’t plant sod where God’s planting seed. He’s more interested in making us grow than having us look finished.” God does not operate on our preferred timeline, so when we see an opportunity to take matters into our hands, we often do. Instead, we should pray, listen, and discern the path that God wants us to take.
Spiritual growth knows no shortcuts, it too requires effort and hard work. No quick fixes or hacks will allow us to skip the difficult steps. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:24-27), Jesus contrasts the lives of those who exercise discipline and expend spiritual energy to grow in faith to those taking the easier way. Busting up rock and digging a deep foundation to build a house on solid rock is hard work. Building a house on sand is a spiritual hack doomed to fail.
Spiritual growth is our path to sanctification. Shortcuts are our path to damnation. The growth may be slow, almost imperceptible at times, but it is true. Sanctification, becoming more Christ-like, requires diligent attention to the ways and means God has provided. We have the Holy Spirit. We do not need shortcuts.