The Shortcut Tax

I think the shortcut for not doing the work yourself, in terms of leveraging existing frameworks or using tools that compress years of learning into moments of application, is having this propped up feeling of ascending higher that another part of you knows it's unsustainable. The knowing and feeling both do co-exist at the same time, but the latter is really not easy to shake off, and it's like a drag mentally/emotionally that would always keep you down.

I'm trying to not explicitly label this feeling as something wrong that immediately needs to be solved for i.e., corrected by going back to the drawing board and doing the work yourself. Doing the work yourself from scratch can be a much more difficult task to accomplish and is not always something possible to do, in certain contexts, such as getting parachuted into a role above your experience level.

You can’t exactly tell the world to pause while you reinvent the wheel just to prove you understand roundness.

Sometimes, the situation demands that you inhabit the role before you actually possess the skills. You have to operate the machine before you know how the gears turn and I think it’s a terrifying kind of reverse-engineering where "you have to start at the top and find your way to the bottom and then work your way back up with actual understanding", kind of getting drop by helicopter in a jungle. No, forest. What's the difference?

The difference, I think, is that a forest signals an ecosystem with rules and paths that you just haven't found yet, whereas a jungle is pure, tangled chaos.

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Personally, it gets murky to differentiate where to draw the line or rather make the transition from piggybacking on sheer momentum and external structures to setting foot on the ground and doing the walk myself, so to speak.

The attending conflict (and how to sort it)

I think the conflict here could be boiled down to the fear that the shortcut ends up defining you in a way that leaves no room for authentic expertise to develop.

Say, I really do have this task of wanting to solve this without tearing everything down, then I have to embrace the concept of backfilling.

1. Accept the helicopter ride Acknowledge that I'm currently elevated by circumstances, luck, or a helpful boost, not entirely by my own muscle. That’s okay. It bought me time and position.

2. Don't fake the climb
   Relatively easy thing to do. The "drag" I feel comes from part of me pretending I climbed the mountain when I actually took the lift. Stop pretending. Admire the view, but admit (at least to my superficial self) how I got there.

3. Build downwards
   More theory than practical, in terms of actually knowing what to do. Learn the basics while managing the advanced stuff. Ask the "stupid" questions. Deeply understand the foundational work I skipped to support my current position.

The value in switching lanes is knowing when to ride the wave and when to start swimming.

Ballpark estimation is first you have ride the wave (the shortcut) to get out to sea quickly, and then you have to start swimming (doing the work) once the momentum dies out, or you’ll sink.


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