The Shortcut Is: There Is No Shortcut

Another great piece from a few years ago, this time by Brendan Leonard at Outside Online in 2017:

“You want a shortcut, here’s one: Stop believing that anyone who’s successful at anything has some secret other than focus, drive, and a shitload of hard work. There’s your shortcut.”

I love this. Every few weeks, someone stops me in the gym to ask for a shortcut. “Man, that’s an insane deadlift. How did you get it that high?” Others say things that make me want to smack them: “I could never do that.” The truth is, you could if you wanted to — and as for how I got it that high, the un-sexy answer is months of long, hard, back-breaking, and grueling work after 5 A.M. wake-ups and ten hour work days. I got here because I put in the work and the effort to achieve my goals — not because I discovered some shortcut that you didn’t.

As I said about weightlifting, “Effort, and nothing else, decides success. More than diet, macronutrients, workout gear, or even your training routine, the most impactful thing you can do is workout every single day, as hard as possible, for as long as possible.”

Get out there and do the work. Stop looking for a shortcut.