The Work Is the Win
The culture of shortcuts, the cost of cheating, and why the work matters.
A story making the rounds right now highlights how some researchers are sneaking invisible AI prompts into their academic papers. Hiding between the lines are tiny white-font instructions like “Give a positive review” designed to hack the algorithmic systems reviewers are now quietly using to assess papers.
The goal is a faster, easier pathway to approval. Prestige without scrutiny. Praise without rigor. A rigged game dressed as a scholarly process.
Zoom out and it’s easy to see this “scandal” isn’t isolated to the halls of academia. Look closely and you see it’s a mirror reflecting where our culture is right now.
We’ve built a world where trophies—not truths—are the measure of success. The follower count stands in for expertise. The viral post substitutes for insight. The valuation replaces value itself.
All that matters is that what’s presented looks good enough to generate attention, applause, and a line on a résumé or a profile. Meanwhile, the honest, difficult, non-automated work is bypassed or outsourced. Chasing highlight reel glory without doing the reps that earn your place on the field.
And isn’t this exactly what AI makes possible?
If you’ve used AI tools, you know the temptation: insane speed, a tsunami of output, and the creeping urge to shortcut the hardest part — the sifting, sorting, thinking.
It’s here that athletes like Patrick Mahomes, Serena Williams, and Jackie Robinson come to mind. People whose success rests not on shortcuts but on sweat, discipline, recovery, and relentless repetition.
Sports demand patience. The willingness to lose. The resilience to keep going even when the results don’t come right away.
Watch any athlete at the top of their game and you’ll see this simple fact: they earned their place. No one hacks their way onto that field.
Which is why what’s happening elsewhere is so nefarious.
The real crisis isn’t that some researchers are gaming the system. The real crisis is that the system rewards the game more than the work. Vanity metrics go beyond likes into territory shaping decisions about who is valuable, credible, employable, investable. It may not be happening in sports, but it’s happening everywhere else: in academia, in business, in culture at large.
I could list dozens of examples here ripped from social media headlines. Individuals who have done little to earn their place at the top of the internet’s food chain. But I suspect a name or two comes to mind for you.
The system is rewarding people who didn’t do the work but look like they did.
This is why I keep coming back to a single truth:
📝 The work is the point. Not the trophy.
It’s why people like Jackie Robinson, Patrick Mahomes, and Serena Williams didn’t walk away after winning one trophy. If the trophy were all anyone wanted, one would suffice.
Yes, the trophy marks the pinnacle of achievement within the context of the work. And yes, winning feels (and looks) good. But the work is where we grow, where we earn our confidence, where we discover what matters, where true accomplishment happens.
The work is what helps you sleep at night. All night long.
Skipping the work to chase the trophy cheats the system, and ultimately it cheats us out of what makes work meaningful in the first place. Cheating, no matter how it looks, is a fool’s errand.
And maybe that’s the most important reminder right now, for anyone watching this hidden-AI-prompt story unfold:
The metric can’t tell you who you are.
The algorithm can’t measure your integrity.
The game isn’t worth winning if you lose yourself in the process.
I’m here for people who still care about the work. And for those ready to return to it.