If there are no shortcuts to success in life, then how come some effectively achieve it so much faster than others?
The reality is that life is full of shortcuts. So here’s a list of our favorite effective shortcuts in life.
Don’t worry if you don’t feel like reading, you can enjoy the video below or watch it on YouTube:
1
Play the most favorable game
Do you know how a bottle of water at the airport costs three times as much as it does in a grocery store?
It’s the same with your time and energy and where you decide to deploy them.
You see, most of the time, what game you play is more important than how good you are at it.
It doesn’t matter if you are a great engineer or if you live in a place where there is no need for engineers.
Just like it doesn’t matter how great you are in an industry that’s slowly going away or it’s being replaced entirely.
It’s smarter to join a game where the odds are in your favor.
It might not be the flashiest or the most popular, but if it’s where your strengths shine, success will be easier to grab.
Stay away from sinking ships and take your time to study the playing field.
2
Play by the book
Look, we have thousands of years documented as humanity.
There is really no stone left unturned. Nothing has really changed.
What merchants did back in ancient Greece is no different than what merchants do today; only the tools differ.
So there is really no secret formula you haven’t found yet or a secret strategy you need to figure out.
You can literally copy-paste what others have done successfully, and there’s a good chance it will work for you as well.
At least as long as you stick to it long enough.
Think of it like cooking. While we have modern gadgets like air fryers and instant pots, the basic rules of cooking, like balancing flavors and cooking times, remain unchanged.
Similarly, in any field, there are foundational rules and best practices.
These are like the recipes for success that experienced professionals have followed and refined over time.
Whether it’s business, art, science, or sports, these fundamental strategies guide you toward achieving your goals more efficiently and effectively.
It’s tempting to believe you’ll invent a groundbreaking new approach, but chances are, someone’s already thought of it.
So the shortcut is this: use the hard work of others to make your work easier.
You programmers should be really familiar with this concept.
3
Play it safe
Contrary to popular belief, highly successful people are extremely safe with their resources.
You might think the shortcut is taking a huge risk for an even bigger reward. That’s not the case.
The effective shortcut for a better life is freeing up mental space by not doing dumb sh*t and losing sleep over it.
You see, the reality is, that risk-taking is for fools and impatient people.
No one in their right mind would jeopardize their resources for quick gains. And this is different from making calculated predictions.
You see, a risk is something where you hope that something good will happen.
A calculated prediction is something that has a high probability of success based on facts and data. Don’t get them twisted.
4
Keep it really. Really simple
While most people are busy trying to figure out the most complicated and convoluted business strategy known to mankind, something that incorporates AI, cloud solutions, solar energy, and fairy dust, others make a ton of money out of food trucks and car washes.
There are two things to take away here:
- Successful entrepreneurs have very simple businesses.
- Successful investors have very safe portfolios.
They aren’t reinventing the wheel but rather delivering consistent value with a model that’s easy to understand and manage.
Few approaches will ever feel like more of a shortcut in life than keeping it simple.
5
Find like-minded people
The greatest shortcut in life is to join forces with others who have the same goals and aspirations as you do.
And if you can’t find them, make the network yourself, and others will join you.
The community of like-minded people becomes your stronghold.
It’s a space for exchanging ideas, seeking advice, and offering support.
As you grow together, learn together, and work together, you’ll find that the road to success becomes less bumpy.
A group of people with shared goals moves incredibly fast compared to a single individual.
Everyone’s learning is multiplied, and you can leverage each other’s resources. This will lead us to one of the most effective shortcuts in life there is:
6
Mentor Match
The next level of finding like-minded people is to find someone who has already done what you are trying to do and to emulate that person.
And no, that person is not Elon Musk.
Identifying your mentor match involves introspection and research.
Reflect on your values, goals, and preferred working style, and seek mentors who not only embody success but also resonate with these aspects.
Look for individuals whose career trajectories inspire you, whose stories echo your dreams, and whose advice aligns with your principles.
When the match is right, mentorship becomes more than a transfer of knowledge.
It transforms into a dialogue, a partnership where both mentor and mentee learn and grow together.
A mentor match is not about finding a teacher but discovering a partner for your journey of personal and professional development—someone who not only shows you the ropes but also understands and supports your unique vision and approach.
7
Fast-Track Learning
The reality is that you cannot afford to take years to acquire knowledge.
It’s impractical, and it might actually leave you behind.
This is where fast-track learning comes into play.
It’s all about being strategic and focused. It’s identifying and absorbing the core components of any skill or subject that are crucial for you.
Fast-track learning has essentially two steps.
- You study the skill from all the resources you can find, whether that’s courses, books, podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, and so on.
- You immediately put it into practice.
You see, most of the time, you don’t need the whole bulk of a particular skill.
You just need a certain part. The difficult part then becomes finding that 20% that enables 80% of the results.
Why is it difficult? Because in the age of attention economy, more and more entertainment sells as education. That’s what we’re solving here at Alux.
We are curators of information and experience, extracting the essence of success from people who have actually led extraordinary lives. And we bring everything we learn into the Alux app.
Instead of jumping through countless hours of copy-paste gurus preaching the same generic BS, how about taking a structured approach that has been proven to work for thousands of people?
Remember what we talked about at #2: over 60% of our users have achieved their main goal going by the Alux book. What are you waiting for? Download the app and start your journey right now, it’s free!
8
Decision Matrix
A decision matrix is a straightforward tool that helps you make tough choices with confidence.
There are multiple versions of this, with the most basic one being the pros and cons list.
But the point remains the same.
You build a system that does the decision-making for you after you put it into place.
It actually takes a lot of mental power to make even the most basic of decisions, like what to have for breakfast.
Try and automate the whole process and make sure it always makes decisions in your best interest. You can see how making fewer bad calls is a highly effective shortcut in life, right?
9
Feedback loop
Find a way to get feedback as soon as possible, and implement it as soon as possible.
When people get personal trainers, they don’t do it because they don’t know what a pushup looks like.
They do it so they can have someone instantly correct them when they go off course.
The most efficient people are those who can test and reiterate quickly. In fact, fast adaptability is like racing the shortcut in an F1 car.
And a feedback loop allows you to do just that. Now, how this looks depends on what you’re doing.
Maybe you have a group of friends who can critique your work. Or maybe it’s something you can release to the market and get feedback that way.
The point is that good and quick feedback is extremely valuable.
Your mom may say you’re the prettiest flower, but your Tinder analytics say otherwise.
10
Priority sorting
Learn to identify and focus on tasks that offer the highest potential return on investment of time and effort.
If you take a hard look at what a day in your life looks like, most things are not that important or don’t amount to anything meaningful.
It’s just busy work to stay or look busy.
But imagine you have only 2 hours every day to work on your thing.
You don’t get any seconds longer, and you must fit everything that’s important in that slot.
You see, suddenly, all the fluff doesn’t matter anymore.
We, as humans, have this interesting ability to get stuff done when the clock is ticking.
Steve Jobs said, “I choose to hire the lazy person to do the hard work. Because the lazy person will find the easy way to do it”.
When you learn to prioritize only the things that actually matter and the ones that have the most impact, your results will multiply.
You see, shortcuts are basically a way of doing things more efficiently and faster.
But we avoid using this exact term so we don’t undermine the hard work that’s ever-present. But make no mistake, there will always be a faster and easier way to do something.
