Cutting Corners Doesn’t Make You Well-Rounded

You might think shaving off a little extra work here and there will make your life easier, but cutting corners to take shortcuts usually ends up costing you more time and money in the long run. Your clients always notice it, too.

Think about the phrase Cutting Corners literally

Consider the practice of cutting corners in terms of taking shortcuts.
Imagine you and another driver are in separate cars headed to the same destination. You’re trying to get there first to nab the best parking space, so when you make a turn from one street onto another you don’t drive all the way to the corner of the intersection — you start turning earlier and cut the corners off your turns by driving through the emergency lanes.

But you want to be shave even more time off your arrival estimation, so you start shaving more margin off your turns. Pretty soon you’re driving up over the curb, clipping the concrete edges. Your tires even start to graze the sidewalk. Pedestrians are yelling and shaking their fists as they jump out of the way, and pretty soon the cops are pulling you over the write you a citation. They didn’t have to chase you very far because they find you in your car broken down by the side of the road. It seems like cutting all those corners and jumping the curb wound up puncturing your tire and breaking your axle.

Now you’ll definitely be the last to arrive at the destination, and you’ll be out of pocket for the traffic fine, the tow truck, and the car repairs.

Cutting Corners didn’t save you anything — it cost you a lot of time and money

Now imagine your best customers saw your reckless driving and recognized you as their account representative. Do you think they still want you to handle their business after they see you cutting corners?

And what about the cop that pulled you over?
Do you think they’d stop at writing you a ticket for reckless operation of a motor vehicle? Probably not. They’re going to test you to see if you’re driving under the influence of any substances, they’re going to run you through the system in search of any other trouble attached to your name, and they’re probably going to look closely at the vehicle to see if there are any other infractions they can add to your charges and fines.

Those individuals are going to figure that if you’re cutting corners in one area, you’re probably cutting corners in other areas too.

Shortcuts aren’t always a good thing.
It is rarely a matter of who gets to the finish line first, who turns in their homework first, or who signed the biggest sales contract the fastest. Most people pay attention to how you got to the finish line (not just when).

If you got to the finish line first, but there are dead pedestrian littering the sidewalk behind you — you’re hardly considered a winner. If you turn in your homework first, but it is a word-for-word copy of a Wikipedia page you’re probably not going to get an extra credit. And if you sign a big business deal, but everything you promised in the contract is impossible to deliver it’s doubtful you’ll be winning any sales contests.

Cutting corners usually means you’re working an angle, and that you’re probably going to end up having to pick-up a lot of broken pieces.