From weight-loss drugs to AI-generated growth plans, shortcuts are multiplying at lightning speed, not just changing how we live, but reshaping the culture of business and work itself. Yet as execution becomes effortless, what’s truly being lost argues entrepreneur Puja Bharwani, is discernment and the discipline that drives meaningful transformation.

A doctor recently offered me GLP-1s. I hadn’t asked for them. I’m not diabetic. I’m not obese. Yet here was a shortcut presented to me without hesitation, a solution to a problem I never had handed over as casually as a prescription for vitamins. It was such a small moment, barely worth remembering. But it lodged itself in my mind because of what it represented: how effortlessly we now reach for shortcuts, and how readily they’re dispensed, even when the long road might serve us better.

That encounter became a lens through which I started seeing everything differently. I’m witnessing this pattern everywhere now, woven into the fabric of how people approach both life and work. AI tools generate business plans in minutes, documents that go unread, born from lazy prompts and absent critical thinking. Pitch decks materialise overnight, promising transformative outcomes while glossing over the messy, unglamorous process required to achieve them. Apps get coded at lightning speed without user feedback or meaningful research into real use cases. Strong opinions crystalise from watching reels, with people refusing even the slightest intellectual debate—a textbook case of a little knowledge becoming a dangerous thing.

Let me be clear, I’m not against leveraging technology, social media, or scientific advances for productivity, learning, and progress. I use AI daily. Technology and medical breakthroughs save lives, restore hope, and expand what’s possible. But here’s what deeply troubles me. Somewhere along the way, we’ve mistaken efficiency for transformation. We’re confusing shortcuts with genuine growth, mistaking the map for the territory, and the simulation for the real thing.

Some aspects of being human simply cannot be rushed, no matter how sophisticated our tools become. Having a baby still requires nine months because you cannot optimise gestation. Biology has its own timeline, indifferent to our impatience. Building a company still demands the grind of clarifying your value proposition, shaping your brand identity, and earning trust from people who don’t yet know you, who have no reason to believe in you. And to my fellow startup founders—we know this intimately, painfully—no prompt can replace product-market fit or substitute for actually sitting down and talking to your users, hearing their frustrations in their own words, watching them struggle with your product in real time.

Shortcuts can get you started. They can help you gain momentum, cross the initial threshold, put something out into the world. But it’s the process—the long, inefficient, often uncomfortable process—that makes you.

There’s a cultural shift in business that nobody’s naming directly, and I believe we’ve entered what I call the “Performance Theater” Era. We’re optimising for the appearance of productivity rather than the substance of progress. LinkedIn overflows with founders posting about their “journey” using AI-generated carousels that all look suspiciously similar. X drowns in threads about systems and frameworks that nobody has actually stress-tested in the real world, under real pressure. Pitch decks shine with more polish than ever before, while the underlying businesses remain thin, lacking depth and that essential human element that makes something truly compelling.

We’ve become method actors in a play about innovation, delivering our lines with conviction, hitting our marks perfectly. But we’ve forgotten that we’re supposed to actually build something of value first, something that solves real problems for real people. A few months ago, I read about Thinking Machines Lab—a six-month-old startup that raised US$2 billion in a seed round. No product. No revenue. Obviously, no users. Just 50 people, some very big names (including Mira Murati, the popular “Mother of ChatGPT”), and a one-page website listing their core values. At first, it felt absurd, like another Silicon Valley fever dream, another example of capital detached from reality.

Then I realised something, that $2 billion wasn’t a bet on technology. It was a bet on judgment, on the ability to make sound calls amid high-stakes uncertainty, to navigate ambiguity when the path forward isn’t clear. That’s where wisdom enters, emerging from the hard-won marriage of knowledge and experience. Intelligence is now abundant, almost commoditised. Wisdom remains rare, precious, and the gap between the two is widening at an alarming rate.

I’ve reached a point where I ask about the dosage of any shortcut before using it. I need to know when it serves me and when it robs me of the very thing I’m trying to build. With the doctor who offered the magic G-pill, I opted instead for probiotics specifically tailored to my needs. That was the actual gap I needed to fill, not a blanket solution to a problem I didn’t have. Think of it this way: AI, like GLP-1s, is a performance enhancer. It can fill specific gaps, provided you’ve identified the right ones through genuine self-knowledge. Used strategically, it amplifies your capacity, frees up cognitive load, and allows you to focus on high-leverage thinking. Used indiscriminately, it atrophies the muscles you need most which is judgment, taste, synthesis, and original thought—the very capabilities that make you irreplaceable.

The people who are thriving aren’t using AI for everything. They’ve figured out precisely where in their process to deploy it and where to remain fully human, maintaining their agency and their unique perspective. They use AI to draft first versions or serve as a thought partner—one tool among many sources, not a replacement for their own thinking. They generate options quickly, then apply judgment to select the right one. They automate repetitive research, then synthesise insights that only their lived experience can produce. They accelerate execution on validated ideas rather than replacing the validation process itself.

What they absolutely don’t do is outsource the thinking that builds their competitive advantage. Because here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: if AI can do your entire job with a simple prompt, you don’t have a job, you have a task. And tasks get automated. They get commoditised, compressed, and eventually eliminated.

You can’t prompt your way to taste. You can’t automate your way to trust and authority. You can’t shortcut your way to the scar tissue that teaches you how to navigate complexity, how to make the right call when all the data points in different directions.

Playing it safe and playing it smart are not the same thing. Constantly chasing shortcuts is playing it safe—it’s the illusion of progress without the risk of genuine transformation, without putting yourself on the line. Playing it smart means knowing when to take the long road because that’s where real advantage gets built, where you develop capabilities that can’t be copied. It means choosing discomfort strategically, not avoiding it entirely.

We need to return to a willingness to stand in the mess long enough to develop our own judgment, to let our own voice emerge. In an age of infinite shortcuts, perhaps the most radical act is choosing the process that makes you—understanding that some things like taste, wisdom, and authority cannot be rushed or hacked. They can only be earned through time, through repetition, through showing up even when it’s hard.

The people who will shape the next decade will be those who know what to optimize and what to build slowly, deliberately, and with full presence. They’ll know when to use the shortcut and when to take the scenic route, and they’ll make that choice consciously, strategically.

Shortcuts can get you started. But the process is what makes you worth following.

Puja Bharwani is a communications strategist and brand storyteller focused on how technology is reshaping leadership and business innovation. She’s the co-founder of Wizly, a decision intelligence platform that helps executives access verified expertise and is a former Reuters journalist.