Acidic Abs
Artificial Strength
Some things take a long time to develop. For some of those things, like baby elephants, the timeline is clearly defined: 22 months. For others — brand loyalty, emotional maturity, confidence in public speaking — time is measured not in months, but in effort. In both cases, shortcuts usually don't help. Usually.
Last month a Chinese man spent $560,000 to develop a fake set of 8-pack abs. Andy Hao Tienan received 40 injections of Hyaluronic acid in his shoulders, collarbones, chest, and abdomen, proving he's more allergic to hard work than needles.
The 33-year-old fashion and beauty content creator is "committed to his body art experiment," aiming for a total of 10,000 injections and the Guinness record for longest-lasting artificial abs. I’m no psychiatrist, but something tells me this isn’t really about fitness. It feels less like body art and more like a cry for the algorithm. Nothing says ‘notice me’ like a six-figure shortcut to notoriety.
Sadly, some of Tienan's followers see him as an inspiration for figuring out how to look fit without putting in the effort. Why do 30,000 crunches when you can drop half a mil on acid-filled syringes?
Oh, I don't know...maybe because those injections could present serious negative long-term consequences, like bone erosion and blood vessel necrosis. But then again, why worry about living a few years in a dead body when you can live forever in a record book?
All that effort just to avoid effort. The irony is protein-rich.
Skip the Skipping
Tienan's obsession is a perfect example of instant gratification gone overboard. This extreme desire to obtain a goal — without the patience to truly earn it — almost always results in unwanted side effects.
When did we become so impatient?
At work we sometimes inject fast fixes that feel smart in the moment but boomerang and punch us in the gut down the road.
We opt for speed over depth when we overuse AI and let tools think for us instead of with us. Sure, it looks like productivity, but if you can't clearly explain the logic behind the output, you might lose more than just credibility.
We sacrifice sustainability for acceleration when we rush a new concept to market before stress testing it. Sure, we may beat the competition to the punch, but we might get knocked out by costly re-work further downstream.
We optimize what’s measurable instead of what’s meaningful when we chase KPIs at the expense of customer trust or team health. Sure, the dashboard turns green — but the system underneath quietly turns brittle.
Here's the thing...most shortcuts aren’t time savers. They’re time displacers. Shortcuts don’t eliminate the work — they just relocate it into the future, usually with interest.
The next time you feel the urge to replace 3-4 sets of workplace crunches with acidic injections, try these ideas:
Pay Attention to Your Thoughts
If you hear yourself thinking, “No one will notice…” or “We’ll fix it later…” or “This'll be good enough for now…”, that’s usually not strategy speaking. That’s stress negotiating.
Set an “Explain It Back” Rule
If you can’t clearly explain the logic, the trade-offs, and the risks of what you’re doing, you’re probably outsourcing thinking, not accelerating it.
Play the Tape Forward
Shortcut thinking lives in the present. Wisdom lives in the second act. Ask yourself, "What problem might this create in a week? A month? At performance review time?" Most shortcuts look great in Scene 1 and disastrous by Scene 3.
Shortcuts promise relief, but they rarely deliver freedom. They just move the discomfort to a later date.
Real progress — in work, fitness, and life — still comes down to the unglamorous basics: showing up, doing the reps, and letting time do what time has always done best.
Question of the Week
What’s one shortcut you’re currently taking that future-you is quietly dreading?
