The Shortcut That Nobody Would Know About

The shortcut is right there.

In the drill. In the preparation. In the thing you’re supposed to do but haven’t done. The corner you could cut that nobody would notice. The rep you could skip. The standard you could let slide just this once because the season is long and you’re tired and it’s Tuesday.

The temptation is real. And the fact that nobody would know is the most dangerous part of it.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Nothing is hidden. That’s not a surveillance warning — it’s a perspective on the nature of reality. There is no truly unobserved moment. Which means the “nobody would know” calculation — the one that makes the shortcut feel low-cost — is built on a false premise.

But even setting aside the theological dimension: somebody does know. You know. And the athlete who cuts the corner doesn’t just do it once in a drill. They train themselves to cut corners. They build the habit of doing less than is required when the cost seems low. And that habit shows up — reliably, predictably — in the moment when the cost is highest.

The game situation where you need to do something you haven’t done in practice will reveal what you actually built in practice. Not what you were supposed to build. What you actually built — including the shortcuts you took when nobody was watching.

The shortcut today is a vote for who you’re going to be in the moment that counts. And you don’t get to decide in that moment what you’ve built. That was decided in the drill on Tuesday when the coach wasn’t watching closely and the shortcut was available.

Do the rep. Do it right. The nobody-would-know calculation is wrong.

Honest self-naming of a real shortcut. The specificity is the whole point.