A mentor won’t hand you a shortcut. They’ll show you which long roads are worth taking.

What somebody further along actually owns is not a bypass. It is a map of dead ends: which promising road costs two years, and which slow one is worth the walk. Asking for a shortcut wastes the only thing they can really hand over.

Change the question next time you get twenty minutes with someone who has done it. Not how to get there faster, but what they would skip if they started over, and what took longer than expected and was still worth doing.