Blood & Ink: Sunday

• Everyone wants the supplement, no one wants to walk ten thousand steps every day.
• Everyone wants the surgery, but no one wants a consistent bedtime.
• Everyone wants the excuse of ADD, no one wants to meditate.

The ‘shortcut’—over the long run—is always longer than the direct path.

Shortcuts spawn a hydra of second-order implications. 

Side-effects to be mitigated, finding new shortcuts to resolve the side-effects, constant distraction, and a fragmenting of attention hunting for ever greater shortcuts.

The core problem is reinforcing the Way of Being that is always searching for shortcuts.

• Always distracted, searching for the sneaky route.
• Always questioning, wondering where the free lunch is.
• Always opportunistic, where the ends always justify the means.
• Always incomplete, because there must be something better, out beyond the horizon of awareness.

Seeking the shortcut is finding the Faustian bargain. 

In the pursuit of the shortcuts, you sell your serenity. You snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

In hunting for short-term simplification, you sacrifice long-term satisfaction.

• Instead of spending 3 hours researching the latest app or technological hack to help you write better, faster, and longer – sit down and write the piece in an hour.
• Instead of taking a fat loss pill and then having to find solutions and shortcuts to the sleep disorder, bone mineral density loss, and acne side effects – walk 10k steps every day.
• Instead of using black hat, morally dubious techniques to hijack the attention of pre-teens on social media while eroding your integrity — create authentic and genuine artistic expressions that draw people toward you.
• Instead of wasting hours in the black hole of hyper-niche biohacking techniques and edge-case esoteric interventions, focus on getting your sleep, nutrition, and exercise dialled in.

Do what is required. Put in the work. Do the reps. Stay lucid, present, and on the path.

The direct path is the shortcut,
Eric Brown.