Avoid shortcuts to success

W

ith so many digital things around us, life has become fast. In the past, we did not have emails, as recent as in the 1980s and even in the most of 1990s. We depended on letters. We wrote a letter to a distant place and it would take between one and five days to reach the destination if within the country and up to two weeks for international mails. That determined the pace of life in general.

Today, with emails, distant people and friends are as good as close to us. After all, we can even call them on the mobile phone any time, including on video calls where we can see them – again this mode of audio-visual communication was not there apart from the limited landline phones, which are useful only when both of you happen to be at home or in the office that has the phone, at the same time.

While we are able to communicate fast and while digital transformation has collapsed distances, we need to know that some basics of life remain pretty much the same. You still need to spend eight years at government primary school before you can progress to secondary education. You still need to spend four years in secondary schools before you can proceed to university where you will have to learn for four to five years before you can earn your degree and so on.

Do not believe those that want to suggest to you quick paths to education. Take your time so that you can learn properly and effectively. You want to go through the whole process that is designed to transform you into a refined human being, a refined product of education. If you rush it, you will be half-baked. Similarly, you need to question education systems that sound or look too easy. That which is easy and cheap is exactly that – very cheap and easy. Good things are hard got.

Even when you want to climb career ladders, you need to go through the different stages before you can reach the epitome of professional life. When you graduate, you will need to work as a junior officer and sometimes below those with far lower qualifications than you. Have the humility to listen to them so that you can learn from them. Arrogance and haste will block your learning process.

You will need to spend sometime at officer level before you can progress to a role of senior officer. Then you have to rise to a supervisory role where you are now in charge of a small team. Again, you will have to learn the art of supervising for a couple of years before you can rise to a junior manager’s role. After a couple of years, you will now be promoted to a full manager’s role and then as head of department or director and so on until you become the chief Executive officer or director general. If you take shortcuts, you will not last long up there because you will have reached those levels while half-baked.

In business too, you will have to go through some very difficult and long processes. Do not expect to make a profit in the same month or in the first one year – unless it is small-scale businesses. Most successful businesspeople lost a lot of money and closed a couple of businesses before they found their rhythm and success in the business that makes them rich and successful. For medium to large scale businesses, most of them have reported to me that they took five to seven years before they could see that the business is now thriving, making sustainable profits and given them meaningful reward.

Check around, most of the people that rapidly amassed wealth in the last five years or so are being locked up in police cells, have gone to court and so on. The simple reason is that most of them took shortcuts to success and wealth creation. Those that were taking the natural and normal processes are still happy and at peace. Make your choices right and admire the people that do not take shortcuts to success.