Shortcuts

This evening I was talking with my martial arts training partner on the subject of teaching internal arts to external stylists.

“I believe there are shortcuts,” I said to him.

“I don’t believe in shortcuts,” he ultimately said. “You have to put in the work.”

I thought for a while.

“But I still think shortcuts exist,” I said. “Like if you’re attempting to get great at one thing in your life, maybe you can use seemingly completely unrelated info from another part of your life where you’re already great, and apply those abilities to the understanding of your newer skill.”

He thought about that. He agreed that what I was talking about could be a thing.

That satisfied me.

I think the thing I’m thinking of is called a wormhole, or time travel, or getting older, or rewiring our neural network. Anyway, I believe that shortcuts to getting great at stuff exist.

They just aren’t actually shortcuts. They’re more like tunnels through and among different (seemingly unrelated) abilities.

I think the tunnels are where the fun lives.