Taking Shortcuts In Life Quotes

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.

Death is a fascinating thing. The human mind continually returns and returns to death, to mortality, immortality, damnation, salvation. Some fear death, some seek it, but it is in our human nature to wonder at the limits of human life, at least. When you are sick like this you begin to wonder too much. Death is at your shoulder, death is your shadow, your scent, your waking and dreaming companion. You cannot help, when sleep begins to touch your eyes, but to wonder: What if? What if? And in that question, there is a longing, too much like the longing of a young girl in love. The sickness occupies your every thought, breath like a lover at your ear; the sickness stands at your shoulder in the mirror, absorbed with your body, each inch of skin and flesh, and you let it work you over, touch you with rough hands that thrill. Nothing will ever be so close to you again. You will never find a lover so careful, so attentive, so unconditionally present and concerned only with you. Some of us use the body to convey the things for which we cannot find words. Some of us decide to take a shortcut, decide the world is too much or too little, death is so easy, so smiling, so simple; and death is dramatic, a final fuck-you to the world.

In life, most short cuts end up taking longer than taking the longer route.

Human beings are not made to take shortcuts,... You're to live your life, moment by moment. Your life isn't here to entertain you - it's to be lived.

Crying makes problems seem longer, and laughing makes problems seem shorter. Therefore in life if you cannot find a way out of your problems just take a short cut through them: that shortcut is laughter.

Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones. Imagine explaining to an extraterrestrial visitor the concept of a horse. It would take some time. If the next thing you tried to explain were the concept of a zebra, the conversation would be shorter. You would simply point out that a zebra is a lot like a horse but with black and white strips. Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.

Pain is like a map, I guess. But I found my shortcut on my "map of the heart." Shortcuts always take longer, don't they?

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

One thing was certain: life was a maze. There was nothing “straight forward”. Everything that pretended to be straight somehow ended in unexpected twists and turns, only to leave you full of wonder at how you possibly made it through to the end. You couldn’t just pack a pair of hedge trimmers to take a shortcut and hoodwink fate. No, you had to walk the path of life given to you with all its detours. The goal wasn’t to avoid getting lost sometimes—in fact, that was most unlikely given that you were in a maze. The trick was simply to keep walking. To enjoy the process of getting lost and finding yourself again, different and more grown-up than when you had left. One step after another, that was all that it took. One step after another, so simple and so utterly enough.

Success is about not taking shortcuts in your life.

You, who may want to take the shortcut home, think of the journey that you have missed.

It’s true: she’s looking for the book just not for voice or the shortcuts to the strength. Deep down, she knows she’s looking for her purpose, too. And if her alarms say this Devil’s Book, a book believed to be written by the devil, will take her to her purpose, shouldn’t she look for it? Magic Mama says, “The place where you are, shows your purpose.” Monk Minakshi in her books says: ‘Your past shapes your purpose.’ But what if she has no past? And what if this place isn’t her place? Because a nameless, ghost-like woman warned her not to look for the book, should she now stop searching for it? Stop searching for her purpose? How can someone stop searching for purpose? What remains if the purpose is lost? Exams? Grade training? Dance lessons for flawless body language? Why would she need flawless body-language in the first place? Because High Grades have it? Because if you don’t shield yourself with it, others will use theirs on you? So everything she must do is only to shield herself from what others might do? And this should be her purpose—shielding herself from inside a cocoon? For a weak? Yes, sweetie. So living means only ‘defending’ yourself? For a woman? Yes, sweetie. Kusha imagines how Meera would’ve answered her now. They say life is beautiful. But they don’t say life is beautiful only if you free yourself from your fears, only if you stop fantasizing about future damages. And you conquer fear when you are strong, when you are sovereign.

Success isn't something you have, it's something you do. Don't be fooled into taking shortcuts, they always lead to a dead-end. Instead, establish a goal, make a plan, and take purposeful action. Those who experience success are those who live it; those who earn it.

What drives my life is not the desire to get along with other people or make friends so much as a moral obligation to give back as much as—no, more than—I take. That’s karma. It’s really not so far from the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Some

My friend Nancy Dornan says, “The longest distance between two points is a shortcut.” That’s really true. For everything of value in life, you pay a price. As you desire to grow in a particular area, figure out what it will really take, including the price, and then determine to pay it.

I've learned the best reason to take children on the road: children learn and understand how to behave by being exposed to new situations and watching others...As a teacher of children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, I came to understand that my students would work harder for a better life if they saw the life they were working for.

So this very day, donate clothing you don’t wear, sporting equipment you don’t use, books you aren’t going to read, or furniture needlessly taking up space. Make a financial donation to a charity you support. Be generous with your time by volunteering at your local school, a homeless shelter, or the nonprofit of your choice. It’s the quickest shortcut I can suggest to having a life of impact.

My Personal Super Shortcut To Happiness - When you prefer to lighten up your self-awareness, allow yourself to focus on your strongest joy, passion, and excitement. It is something you can do at every moment of your life, whenever you become aware of not feeling well. Always choose, out of all available joys, passions and excitements, as small as they may be, whatever makes you feel good about yourself. Act on the joy you determine as the passion of the moment, and enjoy it as long as it is fun for you. When it stops being enjoyable or when there is something else, which you become aware of, as more pleasurable, do it. You do not need any reason to have in order to embrace what interests you. You do not need any reason either, to stop doing something in the middle, when it does not excite you anymore. Whatever you choose to follow as your joy, as small and insignificant as it may appear, have no expectations, how this little joy can take you to your big dreams. Enjoy it only because you like it, and not because you expect some specific outcome in the future.

it’s okay to be afraid. it’s okay if you don’t know who you are yet. we all have different timelines of discovering life, our own unique ways of figuring things out. maybe you still aren’t sure if the path you are taking is right for you. it’s okay, don’t judge yourself for not knowing everything all at once. we all find our way through falling and rising, by taking chances. there are no shortcuts to live this life, and if we keep on waiting for the right time or the right way to truly start living it, we will be waiting here forever.

No one wants to learn an instrument, Rachel. It's grueling repetition. And besides, you're too old to start. Concert violinists who learn the traditional way begin when they're six or seven." Risa can't help but listen to the irritating conversation taking place between the well-dressed woman and her fashionably disheveled teenage daughter. "It's bad enough they'd be messing in my brain and giving me a NeuroWeave," the girl whines. "But why do I have to have the hands, too? I like my hands!" The mother laughs. "Honey, you've got your father's stubby, chubby little fingers. Trading up will only do you good in life, and it's common knowledge that a musical NeuroWeave requires muscle memory to complete the brain-body connection." "There are no muscles in the fingers!" the girl announces triumphantly. "I learned that in school." The mother gives her a long-suffering sigh. "Think of them like a pair of gloves, Rachel. Fancy silk gloves, like a princess wears." Risa can't stand it anymore. Making sure she's low enough so that her face can't be seen, she gets up, and as she walks past them, she says, "You'll have someone else's fingerprints.

Let’s watch: Damasio reported that the purely unemotional man was incapable of making the simplest decision. He could not get out of bed in the morning, and frittered away his days fruitlessly weighing decisions. Shock! This flies in the face of everything one would have expected: One cannot make a decision without emotion. Now, mathematics gives the same answer: If one were to perform an optimizing operation across a large collection of variables, even with a brain as large as ours, it would take a very long time to decide on the simplest of tasks. So we need a shortcut; emotions are there to prevent us from temporizing. Does it remind you of Herbert Simon’s idea? It seems that the emotions are the ones doing the job.

I miss all our most ordinary things. Breakfast on the veranda. Weeds in the flower beds.” She takes a breath, then answers: “I miss the dawn. The way it stamped its feet at the end of the water, increasingly frustrated and impatient, until there was no more holding back the sun. The way it sparkled right across the lake, reached the stones by the jetty and came onto land, it’s warm hands in our garden, pouring gentle light into our house, letting us kick off the covers and start the day. I miss you then, darling sleepy you. Miss you there.” “We lived an extraordinarily ordinary life.” “An ordinarily extraordinary life.” She laughs. Old eyes, new sunlight, and he still remembers how it felt to fall in love. The rain hasn’t arrived yet. They dance on the shortcut until darkness falls.

In life, we are all on the same journey, we are all struggling to get from point A to point B. Different people have different point A originations and B destinations, but the path we travel is the same. If you can take what you have learned; share the experience and shortcuts you've discovered along the way, offer time saving tips and how you finally made it - then you can lighten the load of those who are just beginning on a similar path. Getting paid for it is an added bonus. My hope is that you do not end your journey at “I wrote a book” but rather understand that your book is just the beginning. Imagine the products you can create based on the contents of your book. Imagine the opportunities to share your knowledge with more people by speaking, training, coaching. You have an important message to share and the world is waiting...

Those kids would have accepted My Little Pony into their heart that day if it would have ended the chain saw sin massacre. The emotion they learned, the threshold they had to cross that led to God, was raw fear. He’s terrifying. He wants to hurt you. He wants to cut you in half to remove your sin. I think sometimes this happens because we want to take a shortcut to salvation for someone. We want them to be saved right this second and right this moment, and love can feel like it’s taking too long. Love is messy and slow. It unravels at God’s speed, not ours. Shame is faster. Fear is faster. And if the goal is to get them in the door, then fear becomes a pretty good method. To tell you the truth, terrifying someone into a relationship with God is also easier. Love makes us vulnerable. I have to throw myself out there and be honest and naked and open to getting rejected if love is what I give to you. But fear doesn’t require any of that. I can yell and scream and try to intimidate you without getting hurt or taking any real risks. Love is harder because it demands that I get personally involved in your life. Fear doesn’t carry those same requirements.

Every special human being strives instinctively for his own castle and secrecy, where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the majority—where he can forget the rule-bound "people," for he is an exception to them;—but for the single case where he is pushed by an even stronger instinct straight against these rules, as a person who seeks knowledge in a great and exceptional sense. Anyone who, in his intercourse with human beings, does not, at one time or another, shimmer with all the colours of distress—green and gray with disgust, surfeit, sympathy, gloom, and loneliness—is certainly not a man of higher taste. But provided he does not take all this weight and lack of enthusiasm freely upon himself, always keeps away from it, and stays, as mentioned, hidden, quiet, and proud in his castle, well, one thing is certain: he is not made for, not destined for, knowledge. For if he were, he would one day have to say to himself, "The devil take my good taste! The rule-bound man is more interesting than the exception—than I am, the exception!"— and he would make his way down , above all, "inside." The study of the average man—long, serious, and requiring much disguise, self-control, familiarity, bad company - (all company is bad company except with one’s peers):—that constitutes a necessary part of the life story of every philosopher, perhaps the most unpleasant, foul-smelling part, the richest in disappointments. But if he’s lucky, as is appropriate for a fortunate child of knowledge, he encounters real shortcuts and ways of making his task easier; I’m referring to the so-called cynics, those who, as cynics, simply recognize the animal, the meanness, the "rule-bound man" in themselves and, in the process, still possess that degree of intellectual quality and urge to have to talk about themselves and people like them before witnesses;—now and then they even wallow in books, as if in their very own dung. Cynicism is the single form in which common souls touch upon what honesty is, and the higher man should open his ears to every cruder and more refined cynicism and think himself lucky every time a shameless clown or a scientific satyr announces himself directly in front of him. There are even cases where enchantment gets mixed into the disgust—for example, in those places where, by some vagary of nature, genius is bound up with such an indiscreet billy-goat and ape; as in the Abbé Galiani, the most profound, sharp-sighted, and perhaps also the foulest man of his century—he was much deeper than Voltaire and consequently a good deal quieter. More frequently it happens that, as I’ve intimated, the scientific head is set on an ape’s body, a refined and exceptional understanding in a common soul; among doctors and moral physiologists, for example, that’s not an uncommon occurrence. And where anyone speaks without bitterness and quite harmlessly of men as a belly with two different needs and a head with one, everywhere someone constantly sees, looks for, and wants to see only hunger, sexual desires, and vanity, as if these were the real and only motivating forces in human actions, in short, wherever people speak "badly" of human beings—not even in a nasty way—there the lover of knowledge should pay fine and diligent attention; he should, in general, direct his ears to wherever people talk without indignation. For the indignant man and whoever is always using his own teeth to tear himself apart or lacerate himself (or, as a substitute for that, the world, or God, or society) may indeed, speaking morally, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, the more trivial, the more uninstructive case. And no one lies as much as the indignant man.

If life takes you long way, take a shortcut!

Health Rule Ditch shortcuts to nutrition and health, which can shortcut your life. Unless you are correcting a legitimate deficiency or addressing a condition such as pregnancy, then you likely don’t need to be taking multivitamins and other supplements.

Cheaper types of coffee cost less because they not only use lower-quality beans, but also include a higher percentage of damaged beans, which are more susceptible to mold toxins. You won’t see these mold toxins—they are an invisible by-product of shortcuts coffee producers take when processing green coffee beans. The processing techniques add flavor but unintentionally amplify the amount of toxins in the coffee.

Happiness can be a confusing concept for Christians. On one hand, if we serve a good God who promises us a full and abundant life, shouldn't we be happy? On the other hand, any careful reading of the life and way of Jesus reveals a life open to suffering and self-denial. The very message of the gospel confronts the shortcuts humans take to happiness and calls those who follow Christ to a new way of life. This apparent tension has commonly become a weapon in the shouting matches between gay-affirming voices and traditional voices. The affirming voices call for the unimpeded opportunity for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people to experience self-fulfillment through sexual intimacy, relationship, marriage, equal status, and so on. The traditional voices point to a path of self-denial and suffering as the way to live out God's standards. For a gay Christian, when happiness and suffering are pitted against one another, this dilemma can disintegrate into a no-win situation and a source of shame.

Life turns on small choices. A last-minute decision to take a shortcut over a snowy pass. A shrugging dismissal of the odd-looking man in the long coat standing off to one side. A decision to postpone a physical exam till a less busy time. A word spoken with the best intentions. Looking back, after the lives are destroyed, the blood spilt, the families shattered, and even the courses of nations changed forever, the mistakes that started the doomsday clock ticking down often seem minor, even innocent-even virtuous. So easy to make. David Eller would give anything-no, everything-to go back and undo those mistakes. But life does not give us that chance. Like everyone else, he has no choice but to dangle from the hand of that clock, trying in vain to pull them backward as they tick inexorably toward zero.

QUALITY: The Carpenter’s House An elderly carpenter was about to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife, enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. His contractor was sorry to see his good worker go.  He asked the carpenter to build just one more house before retiring. The carpenter accepted, even though he didn’t really want to do so. His heart was not in his work anymore. He put in a half-hearted effort, taking shortcuts and using inferior building materials. The quality of the finished building was much below his usual standards. When the project finished, the contractor came to see the house. He took a look around, then he took out the front-door key and handed it to the contractor. "My friend, this house is yours. This is my gift to you as a thank you for all these years of hard work." The contractor said. The old man was shocked and embarrassed. If only he had known, things would have been done in a different way. He would have taken care of every detail and this house would be the most beautiful house that he’d ever built.  Like the old carpenter, many of us do not give the job our best effort. Then we find ourselves living in the poor quality house we have built.

If you want to learn, Dont take a shortcut If you want to become strong, Learn

This is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. Coco Chanel is a gifted, ambitious, cunning, unloved, and hardworking eel of a woman. You should only buy gloves so beautiful that to lose one of them would break your heart. This is what flirtation is in its purest form—a conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes. And the answer to those questions is always the same word: Maybe. You don’t become a real New Yorker until you can manage the city alone. History is not so busy shaping nations that it cannot take the time to shape the lives of two insignificant people. After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain—yet somehow, still, we carry on. Nothing will uproot your life more violently than true love—at least as far as I’ve always witnessed. Anyway, at some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is. Sex is so often a cheat—a shortcut of intimacy. A way to skip over knowing somebody’s heart by knowing, instead, their mere body. And in the geography of my imagination, a great many “neighborhoods” of intimacy were now also shuttered. There were certain subjects that I had only ever been able to talk about with him. There were places within me that he alone could reach with his listening—and I would never be able to reach those places on my own.

And when you are fighting for your dreams and the world is beating the life out of you; many times you might be tempted to try to take a shortcut. Asking yourself: "Isn't there an easier way?

(from chapter 26, "Emmaus Walks") "[our Quaker retreat leader} warned us against shortcuts [to solve the "badlands"]. he encouraged us to submit ourselves to the boredom, the refining fire of nonperformance, not to be in a hurry. 'A lot is going on when you don't think anything is going on.' ...He went on to suggest that we deepen our understanding of what we were already doing into an intentional Sabbath. A day off, he said is a 'bastard Sabbath'. He affirmed our commitment to a day of not-doing, a day of not-working. 'That's a start. You've gotten yourselves out of the way. Why not go all the way: keep the day as a Sabbath, embrace silence, embrace prayer - silence and prayer. Hallow the name.' ...We quit taking a "day off" and began keeping a "Sabbath", a day in which we deliberately separated ourselves from the work week - in our case being pastor and pastor's wife - and gave ourselves to being present to what God has done and is doing, this creation in which we have been set down and this salvation in which we have been invited to be participants in a God-revealed life of resurrection. We kept Monday as our Sabbath. For us Sunday was a workday. But we had already found that Monday could serve quite well as a day to get out of the way and be present to whatever...It was a day of nonnecessities: we prayed and we played.

Legal You will learn that there are restrictions placed upon you in some areas. These restrictions are for your own protection. You will be prohibited from administering medications, recording sponge counts, or carrying out direct physician’s orders regarding treatment of a patient out of your scope of practice. As soon as you overstep your limitations and boundaries and perform any of these actions, you are placing yourself in legal jeopardy. Whether functioning under the supervision of a surgeon or a registered nurse, a CST is always part of the surgical team and you must carry out your responsibilities within the scope of your practice. Never try to do a task that does not fall within that realm. All counts are significant and have important legal ramifications. When performing a count, it is crucial to ensure that the count is correct for the patient’s well-being. When you are scrubbed, you count sponges while the registered nurse observes and records the count. At any given time during a surgical procedure, the CST may request a sponge, and possibly a sharps count to take place. If you are assisting the circulating nurse in a nonsterile role, you may assist with the counts as long as the nurse verifies it. In this scenario, the nurse is legally acting as the surgeon’s agent. It is the responsibility of the registered nurse to obtain the required medications for a case. The CST draws the drugs into syringes and mixes drugs when scrubbed; during this process, the proper sequence of medication verification and labeling must occur. In any phase of your responsibilities, there are possible grounds for legal breaches. Shortcuts may cause a patient to suffer tragic complications, even loss of life. Negligence must be avoided. Both as an employed CST and as a student, you carry the responsibility to do no harm. If you should become discouraged in your role or begin to feel this responsibility is overwhelming, it could simply mean that you need a change; it isn’t always the other team players or the place of employment that are at

Our brains like to rely on mental shortcuts like this, which is why the High 5 Habit is the fastest and easiest way to override your pattern of looking at yourself and feeling self-doubt and self-hatred, and replacing it with the feeling of self-love and self-acceptance.

A hunch is your brain's way of taking a shortcut to the truth

The shortcut to fulfilment is to gradually let go of "reasons" and "conditions" that have to be met before being happy and aim directly for the feeling you would like to have. When waiting for outside circumstances to change you, rather than recognizing happiness within, you are a puppet of the world. Humans have created Billions of such dependencies. Needing all kinds of things to happen before you can be happy is a certain way of not moving up the scale. Practice feeling alright today rather than projecting happiness into some future that never really comes. Life is taking place today. Can you feel the Today-ness of Life?

Yes, it's true, there are many shortcuts to your destination in life, but when you take the shortcut, your journey gets shorter and what is life, it is a journey, not a destination!

There is no shortcut to success - it takes hard work and dedication but with perseverance, you can become a leader who draws in quality people.

Successful leaders are truthful about what they do, because they know they can never succeed if they take shortcuts by lying to their followers.

Life is short, but do not shorten it even further by taking shortcuts.

It is at first a delicate tightrope walk, which then gets easier as you master the skills required to keep your balance in the new environment. Fortunately, there are shortcuts,

Speed can save you time, but it can also steal your life. Therefore, in trying to save time by taking shortcuts, remember that it can also lead to negative outcomes.

Time is not running short. Time is eternal; there is no hurry. Existence moves in a very lethargic way. Existence moves very slowly, just like the Ganges flows in the plains -- slow, as if not flowing at all. Still it reaches the ocean. Time is not short, don't be in a panic. Time is enough. You relax. If you relax, even the longest path will become the short est. If you are in a panic, even the short path will become very long -- because in panic, meditation is impossible. When you are in a panic, in a hurry, the very hurry is the barrier. When I say, 'Take the jump' -- and you can take the jump immediately -- I am not talking about shortcuts or longcuts. I am not talking about the way at all, because a jump is not a way. A jump is a courageous moment -- it is a sudden phenomenon. But I don't mean that you can do it right now. I will go on insisting, 'Take the jump immediately, as soon as possible.' This insistence is just to help you to prepare for it. Some day you may be ready. Somebody may be ready right now -- because you are not new; for many lives you have already been working. When I say, 'Take the immediate jump,' there may be someone who has been working for many lives, and just standing on the brink, on the abyss, and afraid. He may gather courage and take the jump. Somebody who is very far away, thinking that the immediate jump is possible, will gather hope and start walking. When I say something, it is a device to help many sorts of people in many sorts of situations. But my path is not a short cut, because no path can be a shortcut. The very word is deceptive. Life knows no shortcuts because life has no beginning. God knows no shortcuts. God is not in a hurry -- eternity is there. You can work it out slowly. And the more patiently, the more slowly, the more unhurriedly you work, the sooner you will reach. If you can be so patient, so infinitely patient that you are not worried about reaching at all, you may reach right now.

There is no shortcut in life. You have to take it one step at a time and work hard. And you have to give back. —Hank Aaron

THINGS I LEARNED FROM DAVID CARR: A LIST Listen when you enter a room. Don’t buy into your myth. Don’t be the first one to talk, but if you do talk first, say something smart. Speak and then stop; don’t stutter or mumble; be strong in what you have to say. Be defiant. You have to work the phones. Call people. Don’t rely on emails. Ask questions but ask the right questions. Ask people what mistakes they’ve made so you can get their shortcuts. Know when enough is enough. Make eye contact with as many people as possible. Don’t be in shitty relationships because you are tired of being alone. Be grateful for the things you have in this life. You are lucky. Practice patience even though it’s one of the hardest things to master. Failure is a part of the process, maybe the most important part. Alcohol is not a necessary component of life. Street hotdogs are not your friend. Remind yourself that nobody said this would be easy. If more negative things come out of your mouth than positive, then Houston, we have a problem. We contain multitudes. Always love (See band: Nada Surf). Have a dance move and don’t be afraid to rock it. Don’t go home just because you are tired. Don’t take credit for work that is not yours. If your boss does this, take note. Be generous with praise and be specific in that praise: “That line was killer.” Cats are terrible; they poop in your house. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do the next right thing. Our dogs are us. Only cuter. And finally: You are loved and you belong to me, the world, and yourself. BOOKS I READ WHILE WRITING THIS BOOK The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life—His Own by David Carr The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Gilded Razor: A Memoir by Sam

The moment you first encounter an idea is the worst time to decide what it means. You need to set it aside and gain some objectivity. With a Second Brain as a shield against the media storm, we no longer have to react to each idea immediately, or risk losing it forever. We can set things aside and get to them later when we are calmer and more grounded. We can take our time slowly absorbing new information and integrating it into our thinking, free of the pressing demands of the moment. I’m always amazed that when I revisit the items I’ve previously saved to read later, many of them that seemed so important at the time are clearly trivial and unneeded. Notetaking is the easiest and simplest way of externalizing our thinking. It requires no special skill, is private by default, and can be performed anytime and anywhere. Once our thoughts are outside our head, we can examine them, play with them, and make them better. It’s like a shortcut to realizing the full potential of the thoughts flowing through our minds.

Focus on goals, take small steps, keep your targets in mind & never give up coz there is no shortcut to success!

The Kansas conservatives, it seems to me, can be divided into two basic groups. On one side are the true believers, the average folks who have been driven into right-wing politics by what they see as the tyranny of the lawyers, the America-haters at Harvard, the professional politicians in Washington, or the eviction of God from public space. These kinds of Con will throw themselves under the wheels of an abortion doctor’s car; they will go door-to-door and spend their life savings for their causes; they will agitate, educate, and organize with a conviction that anyone who believes in democracy has to admire. On the other side are the opportunists: professional politicians and lawyers and Harvard men who have discovered in the great right-wing groundswell an easy shortcut to realizing their ambitions. Many of them once aspired to join—maybe even did join—the state’s moderate Republican insider club. Rising up that way, however, would take years, maybe a lifetime, when by mouthing some easily memorized God-talk and changing their position on abortion—as Brownback2 and other leading Cons have done—they could instantly have a movement at their back, complete with superdedicated campaign workers they wouldn’t have to pay and a national network of pundits and think tanks and talk-show hosts ready to plug them in. Kansas’s bright young Republicans know which way

requires us to divide our attention between ever more emails, text messages, cellphone calls, video streams, and blinking banners, resulting, he argues, in lowered productivity and a distracted life devoid of meaning and depth. A similar point is made by Hal Crowther (2010: 108) in an essay in Granta: Though the educational potential of the Internet is limitless, it is becoming apparent that wired students use technology less to learn than to distract themselves from learning, and to take advantage of toxic shortcuts like research-paper databases and essay-writing websites.

So they went out for a walk. They went through narrow, lightless lanes, where houses that were silent but gave out smells of fish and boiled rice stood on either side of the road. There was not a single tree in sight; no breeze and no sound but the vaguely musical humming of mosquitoes. Once, an ancient taxi wheezed past, taking a short-cut through the lane into the main road, like a comic vintage car passing through a film-set showing the Twenties into the film-set of the present, passing from black and white into colour. But why did these houses – for instance, that one with the tall, ornate iron gates and a watchman dozing on a stool, which gave the impression that the family had valuables locked away inside, or that other one with the small porch and the painted door, which gave the impression that whenever there was a feast or a wedding all the relatives would be invited, and there would be so many relatives that some of them, probably the young men and women, would be sitting bunched together on the cramped porch because there would be no more space inside, talking eloquently about something that didn’t really require eloquence, laughing uproariously at a joke that wasn’t really very funny, or this next house with an old man relaxing in his easy-chair on the verandah, fanning himself with a local Sunday newspaper, or this small, shabby house with the girl Sandeep glimpsed through a window, sitting in a bare, ill-furnished room, memorising a text by candlelight, repeating suffixes and prefixes from a Bengali grammar over and over to herself – why did these houses seem to suggest that an infinitely interesting story might be woven around them? And yet the story would never be a satisfying one, because the writer, like Sandeep, would be too caught up in jotting down the irrelevances and digressions that make up lives, and the life of a city, rather than a good story – till the reader would shout "Come to the point!" – and there would be no point, except the girl memorising the rules of grammar, the old man in the easy-chair fanning himself, and the house with the small, empty porch which was crowded, paradoxically, with many memories and possibilities. The "real" story, with its beginning, middle and conclusion, would never be told, because it did not exist.

At the office, everyone tells everyone that everything is “amazing” and “exciting” until the words have been pounded into a kind of semantic pabulum. Of course they do. The pabulum is safe, inoffensive, a way to groom without taking a stand—or standing out. And so, as we scroll through the available smiley faces and wineglass icons, these shortcuts to sensibility, we seldom stop to wonder whether our solitary voices have been squashed by the predetermined flashcards of sentiment we’re encouraged to hold up in their place. :-)

Each day when we awaken from the bookmark of yesterday’s turmoil, we make choices of how to conduct our personal affairs. Each day we must decide if we will act humanely, ethically, and accord dignity to everyone whom we encounter. Each day of living, I fill out a personal diary. I must never be too afraid to wield the pen giving authorship to my own being. Each day is a test and with each day, we fill the pages of the novel that says who we are. Our acts and omissions mark our progress. Every action is a new sentence in our self-profile. Every failure to act is a blank page. We rightfully scorn the shallow author if he or she takes shortcuts and never attempts to gather a grain of personal enlightenment, if they brazenly fail to exhibit any sense dignity, or if they ignorantly lack any tincture of kindliness for other people. We all respond to someone whom loves other people, worships nature, and demonstrates that they know how to share their benevolence with other people.

A mature man does not lament aging, engage in adoration of the self through cosmetic treatments, and partake of drug therapy to prolong his virility. An independent thinker does not capitulate to societal pressures or other forms of coercion. I look forward to developing the bark of a rough man, the weathered, tough-skinned covertures that men take on only when they stand straight into the wind. I shall guard against disappointment, rebuff domination by cruel men, and repudiate the easy. I must steadfastly decline capitulating to the demands of power mongers by curing their favor at the cost of surrendering my inbreed essence. I resolve to battle any wicked person whom attempts to intimate me, maintain personal convictions, and honor my heritage. I need to summon the audacity to go against the grain, eschew shortcuts, and to work from intuition of a person who knows that logic is only half of the equation for true success. In order to live life through both the heart and the mind, I resolve to accept my unusual nature and embrace living spontaneously without shame, remorse, or regret.

Hard life... write more! Life sucks... write more! No matter what don't stop. Keep to the grind and don't let up. Somewhere out there is your ramp to success. Forget about the exits or the shortcuts along the way. Stay on the highway and when the ramp comes... take it and go!

The world is much bigger, richer and more diverse than we imagine, so try to take as many samples as you can while you’re still young. Your first years of adulthood aren’t about earning money or building a career. They’re about getting acquainted with the universe of possibility. Be extremely receptive. Taste whatever fate dishes up. Read widely, because novels and short stories are excellent simulations of life. Only as you age should you adapt your modus operandi and become highly selective. By then you’ll know what you like and what you don’t.

Uh, Gary,” I venture hesitantly, my voice just above the tinny pattering of rain against the car roof. Gary glances at me quickly in the rearview mirror, and then his eyes fall back on the road ahead. “This isn’t the way to my house." I go on, a little more sharply now. "Maybe you should turn on the GPS. I don’t want you to get lost.” Gary snorts. “Relax. This is a shortcut. I take this way all the time to get to your home.” I furrow my brows, trying to think back to the last time I invited him over. I can't dredge up a memory of it. “I'm sorry, when have you been to my house?” His silence makes the short hairs on the back of my neck stand. “When have you been to my house?” I repeat. He only continues to stare forward. “Do you remember when you came to Visionaries to work for me?" He asks offhandedly, catching me off-guard. "I do. It was one of the best days of my life. You were so impressive during your interview. I knew I was going to hire you. And over the years, I never once regretted the decision. Not once.” I watch as the number on the speedometer increases from forty miles per hour to sixty. The click of the locks makes me jump in my seat, and I suddenly feel claustrophobic. I can't find any words to say, so I keep quiet. Gary doesn't seem to notice, because he keeps on without pause. “It didn’t take long for me to fall madly in love with you.” He chuckled harshly. “And you rejected me.” “I don’t date people I work with. It's a rule of mine...Besides, you’re my boss, and I’m not comfortable with that.” I wonder what happened to the traffic. I search the other lanes, but they're empty.