Here it is, tested, effective and worthwhile:

Stop chasing shortcuts.

Personal finance, weight loss, marketing, careers, beating traffic, relationships, education–everything that matters to someone often comes with heavily promoted shortcuts as an alternative.

Fast, risk-free, effortless secrets that magically work, often at someone else’s expense.

But if the shortcuts worked as promised, they wouldn’t be shortcuts, would they? They’d be the standard.

A shortcut is not an innovation. It’s not a direct path, either. Those work, but they require effort, risk and insight.

If you can’t afford the time and effort to do it right, you probably can’t afford to do it over after you realize that the shortcut was merely a trap.

*Originally published on sethsblog.

Seth Godin has written eighteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything.

Image courtesy of Jake Ingle.