In defense of the ‘long way around’

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going

Citius, citius, and well… citius

The Olympic motto promises us "Citius, Altius, Fortius", or faster, higher, stronger. However, I feel that in the modern race for efficiency, the nuance of "higher" and the depth of "stronger" may have been lost in favour of "Citius" or “Faster”. I cannot help but look around within my own research area, and in sport practice more broadly, and feel like every destination these days has a well-used shortcut. If you opt not to take that shortcut, you risk falling behind.

How often have you heard that efficiency is the ultimate virtue, that in order to be good at something, you have to understand the shortest path to a destination. And sure, in many cases that is true. Think of the taxi driver who can ignore their GPS unit to take a shortcut to get you somewhere faster, or the rules and heuristics we use almost on a daily basis to calculate things quickly (e.g. the “rule of three”). The ability to find shortcuts has proven enormously beneficial to our survival as a species too. Finding more efficient ways of starting a fire when it’s cold probably drastically improved survival rates 350,000 years ago. 

But today the shortcut has taken on another identity. Today the shortcut is the way to get ahead, not a better way to survive. If you can build an AI system that writes and things for you 24/7, you will likely be more productive. If you can train athletes with a cognitive training tool when they would otherwise rest or spend time with family, you could possible squeeze a substantial 1 percent more out of them.

However, our modern obsession with the shortcut as a way to get ahead is irking me. There is something not quite right. Reflecting on it from my own perspective, I have never done my best work - or developed my best ideas for that matter - in the fast lane. With everyone speeding by me with groundbreaking pace, I have begun to crave friction, patience and the discomfort of not knowing above the shortcut instead. I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way. The craving for friction feels like the urge to step out of the car and walk the long way is becoming a quiet but necessary rebellion against the ever-increasing need for efficiency. 

I am not alone, and neither are you

Many people are now deliberately choosing a slower pace. Think of the brilliant Adrian Barnett for example, who recently wrote for the Nature Career Column about his intent to half his publication output, in part because, as a key pillar of the Open Science community, he has first-hand experience of what the future will look like, and he is choosing not to play that game. 

I deliver workshops for sports coaches around the world, and they ultimately inspired me to write this. So many coaches echo the same thing. Their colleagues spend most of their time looking for shortcuts, while they want to take the long, winding road that has defined coaching expertise for decades. They too are feeling something is not quite right. 

I felt alone at first in my thoughts of slowing things down, but more and more I see agreeable colleagues both in academia and in sport: Editors of scientific journals who refuse to be chased down by the publisher’s deadlines, academic colleagues who deliberately opt out of the publish or perish culture to slow science down, researchers who resist deadlines that make rigorous science difficult, brave institutions like Utrecht University who withdraw from global rankings, and coaches who choose to adopt a critical lens over a ready-made methodology. 

In defense of the long way around

So, I have - for some time now - chosen to take the long way around too. I want to struggle again, not because I cannot keep up with the rest of the peloton, but because I am competing with my desire to give up on a steep climb. But, choosing the long road in a shortcut world now almost feels counter-cultural. If I opt out of the race, will I get swept up by a broom wagon, or will I still finish the race, no matter how long it takes? I am falling way behind while everyone else is sprinting ahead. But honestly, I don’t care. For me, the long way around is not a slower route to the same destination, but instead a path to a different destination altogether.

When you choose the long way, you are not opting in to being slower, you are opting out of …Ultimately, the long-way around is easily justifiable, not towards others, but to yourself. Think about it this way:

• The struggle IS the learning. If you take the shortcut, you miss out on most of it. 

• The long way builds intuition, not imitation. I dare you, try and have an original thought or idea when taking shortcuts. It is not unless you take the time to understand the foundational principles, you develop an intuition that allows you to improvise, troubleshoot, and innovate when things go wrong. And they WILL go wrong. 

• Competitive advantage. Yes, you heard me right. The long way around is not about competing with others, it’s a competition with yourself. Because the long road is hard, very few people take it. In a world full of people who are used to taking shortcuts, the person who is unfazed by struggle becomes irreplaceable.

Embracing the struggle

Taking the long way around does not require you to delete your AI subscriptions, pour water on your computer or retreat to a cabin in the woods. Instead, it forces you to be deliberate about challenging your relationship with time and effort.

It means choosing the three-hour wrestle with a textbook over the two-minute TikTok tutorial on statistical inference. It means measuring your progress not by the volume of content you consumed today, but by the depth of engagement you achieved. This is, admittedly, uncomfortable. Your peers (and I assure you, your bosses) will naturally expect the speed they have become accustomed to, which means you must become more assertive in setting boundaries.

You will need to be deliberate about shifting the conversation from "how fast" to "how well". When asked when you will deliver X, don't just commit to "tomorrow". Commit to "whenever I have fully understood the nuances of the problem".

If you feel even the slightest inclination to take the long road, now is the time to lean in. Not because I am encouraging you to, but because today’s shortcut-obsessed world needs it to maintain balance. It needs us to show that it is ok to embrace the slow grind. In a world that thrives on convenience and shortcuts, true value is found not in the shortcuts we take, but the ones we deliberately choose to bypass in favour of the long way around.