We all inherently understand that actual growth in life springs from our journey to achieve something meaningful. This could be reaching a physical destination through the adventure of travel or acquiring new knowledge and skills that enrich our minds and souls. However, the journey is often fraught with challenges and temptations to take shortcuts, which present themselves at every turn. This principle applies universally, whether you’re embarking on a cross-country journey to explore a new national park or diving deep into the pages of a book to master a complex new skill. The more accessible, more direct path may seem appealing and rational.
Yet, it’s crucial to remember that humans are not inherently designed for easy solutions.
Aristotle famously articulated, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” This insight reminds us that the path to growth is paved with consistency in our efforts and habitual dedication to learning our crafts.
The essence of our being thrives on overcoming challenges and pushing past the boundaries of our comfort zones. By succumbing to the allure of shortcuts, we rob ourselves of the precious opportunity to grow and develop some of life’s most fulfilling and rewarding experiences. These experiences earned through perseverance and hard work, often carry lessons and insights that cannot be acquired through any shortcut.
Therefore, it’s important to consciously choose the path that, while perhaps more arduous, promises a more prosperous, more rewarding journey. By embracing the challenges and resisting the temptation to cut corners, we allow ourselves to experience personal growth and satisfaction on a level that shortcuts could never offer.
The journey is the reward. Not the destination.
As I sit here and reflect on my life, particularly during my years in junior high and high school, I can’t help but recognize how each book report I completed was a missed opportunity. I often resorted to skim reading, using Cliff Notes, or splitting the reading with my classmates through a divide-and-conquer strategy to save time. Looking back, I realize that I wasn’t just shortchanging my assignments; I was shortchanging myself. I missed the more profound understanding and personal growth from engaging with the material. Instead of diving into the worlds created by authors and learning from the characters and their journeys, I opted for the shortcut, bypassing the rich experience of personal development and intellectual expansion. I skipped out on a crucial point of life – to grow, evolve, and understand the world from multiple perspectives.
The knowledge imparted by the book does not reveal itself as a final, conclusive sentence on the back page. Instead, it unravels gradually with each turn of the page. The lessons we learn are intricately woven into the fabric of each chapter and paragraph, slowly embedding themselves into our consciousness and transforming our perspectives and understanding over time. This transformative process is a journey that cannot be rushed. Attempting to take shortcuts to glean the book’s wisdom robs us of the deep, rich experience of growth and learning that comes from fully engaging with the material, allowing it to challenge and change us bit by bit.
Apps like Blinkist and Shortform offer valuable summaries and insights, making them fantastic resources for those pressed for time. However, they miss out on the transformative experience that comes from the dedicated effort of reading a book. It’s similar to trying to understand a movie by watching it in disjointed 30-second clips over a brief five-minute period. Doing so, you lose the essence of the journey, the nuanced development of characters and plots that only unfold through sustained engagement. In this journey of turning page after page, actual growth and understanding occur, and the reader is not just a passive recipient of information but an active participant in a larger narrative. This depth of engagement, this connection to the material and its broader implications, fosters real change and insight, something that quick summaries, no matter how convenient, cannot replicate.
Embrace the complex tasks. Dedicate yourself to the effort required.
The pervasive culture of TL;DR does not enhance our intellectual or emotional lives. Merely consuming bite-sized information doesn’t lead to transformation; it offers fleeting snippets of facts that are as quickly forgotten as they are absorbed. Proper growth and improvement require transformation, which only unfolds when we fully engage with content. We need the richness of narratives and the depth of taking our time. The information must resonate with us, creating a lasting impact. TL;DR, with its brevity and surface-level engagement, fails to achieve this resonance.