Why Quick Fixes Fail: What No One Tells You
Supplements don’t make you healthy. Protein shakes don’t make you fit. Crypto does not make you rich. Reading „7 hack of executive presence” on LinkedIn will not lead to promotion…
You already know this. But you might need to hear it again: there are no magic pills.
Not for your health. Not for your mind. Not for your energy, your relationships, your influence, your body, or your career. And yet—most of us have paid for at least one. Some of us are still paying for them.
And I don’t mean just medication.
I worked in the pharmaceutical industry and helped to develop new medicines, treatments and vaccines for over a decade. I’ve been part of the process of developing drugs for chronic diseases, infectious diseases, cancers, mental health conditions, and metabolic syndromes. I’ve seen how these products are researched, planned, manufactured, registered and sold.
And I can tell you: a pill can help. But it rarely solves. It manages symptoms. It stabilises mood. It reduces pain. It supports function.
But the root causes? The stress, the loss of strength, the underlying cause of the disease, the exhaustion, the sense of being overwhelmed, the actual problem that makes it so hard to fall asleep, the reason why your blood pressure spikes, the eating habits behind metabolic conditions, the real reason why you drink, smoke and numb yourself that now led to cancer… that’s not something a chemical compound can fix.
Most Pills Treat Symptoms, Not Causes
In mental healthcare, the limitations are clear. Antidepressants, for example, work for up to a third of patients. Their benefits over placebo are modest—only a small statistical advantage—which suggests they mask symptoms rather than fix underlying issues . And once medication stops, symptoms recur.
What the Numbers Tell Us
Let’s get specific:
In the U.S. alone, people spend over $2 billion per year on weight-loss drugs (NIH, 2021). Expected to be in trillions in just a few years from now.
The global supplement industry? Worth $177 billion and rising fast.
Roughly 58% of adults take some form of dietary supplement each month.
That includes “detox” teas, “metabolism boosters”, stress gummies, magnesium for sleep, nootropics for focus, adaptogens for gut health… the list is endless.
What are you actually paying for?
Most people will not become healthier, nor stronger, nor calmer—just more frustrated. More tired. And more convinced that the problem must be them.
It isn’t.
The problem is the lie…
Mental Healthcare: Pills Over Systems
Psychotropic medications are often overprescribed. Critics label this the “Band‑Aid approach”: a pill for every ill, masking deeper problems like poverty, trauma, or social instability. Corporate influence in psychiatry may bias prescribers toward meds over effort.
For many patients, medication provides temporary relief… but not transformation.
Hard work, lifestyle choices, social support, and systemic interventions are much more effective, but less marketed.
After all, it’s hard for a supplement company to stay in business if your problems disappear…
Cynical? Maybe. True? Yes.
We Want to Believe in Shortcuts
Smart women, successful business leaders, women in academia, or proud parents, are not immune to this thinking. In fact, I’d argue they particularly vulnerable to it.
Why?
Because they’ve spent decades optimising.
They know how to get things done. They know how to make trade-offs. They know what it’s like to work under pressure, and they’ve mastered the art of staying functional when everything else is falling apart.
So when someone offers a faster path, or a product that claims to lighten the load… they listen.
But here’s the truth no one puts in the marketing copy:
Most of the time, you’re not buying a solution. You’re just renting relief.
- M. D. Zatonski
The Real Cost of Shortcuts
Consider the person spending:
£175/month on weight‑loss injections,
As little as £80/month on vitamins and supplements,
Only £300/month on books, online programmes, endless therapies, and fad workouts
£60/month on health gadgets or „mental health” and mindfulness apps
That adds up to £74,000 per decade on noting more than symptom suppression, which hardly even works, rather than spend a fraction of it on a sustainable change. That over £7,000 a year. And these are very modest estimates, that do not take into account your spending on booze, fags and STD testing kits.
In contrast, a comprehensive program of cognitive development, learning about nutrition, developing exercise habits, might cost £5,000–£10,000 over ten years—and produce lasting, sustainable, powerful benefits, far beyond mere symptom masking.
Why not save time, energy and money to actually make your life better?
Because many of us prefer the lie: The temporary comfort. The illusion of taking action. The ability to comfort themselves by saying „I did what I could”.
The price to pay for the illusion? Mental wellbeing. Physical health. Chronic stress and related diseases.
It’s Not Just Health
The myth of the quick fix shows up everywhere:
Fitness
“Ten-minute workouts” that promise a transformation. EMS belts. Waist trimmers.
They make you sweat—but they don’t make you strong. Or resilient. Or fitter. Or leaner.
Relationships
Scripts and hacks to “make him text back”, „seduce her in minutes”, or “reignite desire in 24 hours”. Networking events. Social media. Fake friendships. Dating apps.
Real connections never follow any formulas. Have you met a happy social media user? What’s is the percentage of lasting, fulfilling relationships build through Tinder?
We’re sold the idea that reading the right book, sending the perfect text, or leaning into a contrived version of “feminine energy” will repair decades of disconnection or magically attract a fully formed, emotionally available partner.
We’re told to script our vulnerability, optimise our dating profiles, or journal our way into being loved.
The deeper truth is that real connection requires work, commitment, trust, loyalty, boundaries, and self-awareness.
Those are much harder to do. And to sell. But it’s the only thing that actually works.
Education and Learning
Speed reading claims. “Fluency in 30 days.” Passive-learning podcasts. Countless courses. Tons of self-help books.
In reality, the real knowledge is not found in information. It requires deliberate action, practice, attention and repetition. Much harder than listening to a YouTube video, huh?
In the world of learning and personal development, the quick fix comes dressed as productivity hacks, accelerated learning promises, and online guru-led courses that guarantee to “10x” your knowledge, your leadership, or your influence.
Entire industries have been built around selling the illusion of mastery without the work: speed reading techniques, AI-generated business plans, “micro-MBAs” delivered over a weekend.
But real expertise isn’t downloaded. It’s earned. And leadership is not a badge, it’s a process that requires reflection, humility, and consistent action.
Career growth
Personal brand templates. Overnight authority systems. Millions of followers. Instagram likes. 7 leadership hats. Gazillions habits of successful people. Networking events. Corporate development programmes…
LinkedIn visibility ≠ real influence.
Career growth industry is flooded with shortcuts. There’s no shortage of webinars promising to make you a thought leader overnight, LinkedIn bootcamps offering viral post templates, or masterminds where a five-figure investment supposedly gets you “inside access” to success.
But authority isn’t a performance… it’s built slowly, by repeatedly doing hard things well, again and again, and being seen doing them.
Anyone can buy visibility. But credibility takes time.
Parenting
Even in parenting, the snake oils are everywhere: one-click solutions that promise to make your child more resilient, more motivated, or more emotionally intelligent through a game, a checklist, or a new “method.”
But parenting, like leadership, isn’t something you systematise away. It requires being present, showing up imperfectly, and not giving up when things get hard.
At the core of all these shortcuts is the same false promise and the same seduction: the belief that we can bypass the uncomfortable, the slow, the uncertain parts of growth. That with the quick purchase, the „right plan”, the new app we can skip the hard, messy, uncomfortable, time consuming middle.
We can’t. And the more we try, the more exhausted, unhealthy and miserable and we become.
What Actually Works?
You already know this.
The same way you know that relationships take work. That leadership is earned over time. That your calm and clarity are the product of boundaries, not luck.
The things that have been proven to work for millennia are:
Action over knowledge
Consistency over novelty
Structure over stimulation
Reason over emotions
Apprenticeship over self-learning
Coaching and reflection over hacks and shortcuts
Systems over willpower
Fixing causes over symptom management
People we help
When we work with our clients it’s often after years, or decades, of them trying to get results through faster paths. Most of them say some version of this:
“If I had done this properly five years ago, I’d have saved so much time.”
You Don’t Need Another Supplement
You don’t need a new vitamin, a new gadget, or a new PDF to unlock your energy, strength, clarity, or presence.
You need a framework.
A system.
A way of living and working that recognises that you are not broken; you are simply over-extended, under-supported, and sold false promises.
If any of the sentences above feel familiar: pause
Audit what you’ve bought in the last 12 months in the name of “wellbeing”.
Then ask yourself : what would it look like to stop chasing hacks and start building capacity?
The Irony
The irony is this: there is a kind of “magic” that changes everything… but it’s not quick, and it’s not easy. It’s your brain. Specifically, the way you train it.
Cognitive performance: the foundation of how you think, decide, focus, and regulate emotion is upstream of every area we’ve talked about.
Strengthening it has ripple effects across your health, your relationships, your leadership, your learning, and even your capacity to parent under pressure. But it’s not something you can outsource to a supplement or an app. You have to train it.
Research shows that targeted brain training—especially when it includes attention control, working memory, and metacognitive strategies—can improve not just IQ-test performance but also real-world executive function (Jaeggi et al., 2008).
Neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to rewire itself in response to learning and experience, continues well into adulthood and is enhanced through deliberate practice (Draganski et al., 2006).
That means it’s never too late to improve how you think, solve, and self-regulate.
And here’s where it gets powerful:
Executive functions—such as emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and delayed gratification—predict success in nearly every domain of life more strongly than raw intelligence or technical skill (Diamond, 2013).
Train those, and you’re not just “hacking” your brain. You’re increasing your capacity for long-term relationship success, leadership resilience, and deep learning.
It’s not glamorous.
You won’t see results overnight. It takes structure, repetition, and feedback. But it works.
Meditation, for example, has been shown to increase prefrontal cortex thickness and improve sustained attention (Tang, Hölzel, & Posner, 2015).
Cognitive behavioural techniques—practised regularly—change neural pathways that govern negative thought loops and impulsive reactions.
And high-level coaching that focuses on reflection, perspective-shifting, and habit scaffolding doesn’t just feel good. It rewires how your brain filters stress, opportunity, and challenge.
And some of those techniques require only few minutes of deliberate practice per day…
So no… there’s no magic pill. But there is neuroplasticity. And if you’re willing to do the work, you can build a brain that makes every part of your life stronger, more stable, and more meaningful.
References
National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Dietary Supplements. (2023). Dietary Supplement Use in the United States. Retrieved from https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets
Geller, A. I., Shehab, N., Lovegrove, M. C., Kegler, S. R., Weidle, N. J., Wolpert, B. J., … & Budnitz, D. S. (2015). Emergency department visits for adverse events related to dietary supplements. The New England Journal of Medicine, 373(16), 1531–1540. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1504267
Statista. (2023). Global dietary supplements market size 2016–2028. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/828481/global-dietary-supplements-market-size/
Pillitteri, J. L., Shiffman, S., Rohay, J. M., Harkins, A. M., Burton, S. L., & Wadden, T. A. (2008). Use of dietary supplements for weight loss in the United States: Results of a national survey. Obesity, 16(4), 790–796. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2007.136
National Institutes of Health (NIH). (2021). Dietary Supplements for Weight Loss. Retrieved from https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WeightLoss-Consumer/
Moncrieff, J., & Kirsch, I. (2005). Efficacy of antidepressants in adults. BMJ, 331(7509), 155–157. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.331.7509.155
Kirsch, I., Deacon, B. J., Huedo-Medina, T. B., Scoboria, A., Moore, T. J., & Johnson, B. T. (2008). Initial severity and antidepressant benefits: A meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. PLoS Medicine, 5(2), e45. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045
Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1987). The psychology of reading and language comprehension. Newton, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267
Cappelli, P. (2015). Will the gig economy make the office obsolete? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/08/will-the-gig-economy-make-the-office-obsolete
Williams, D. (2020). Online credentialing and the illusion of expertise: A review of unregulated professional certification. Journal of Educational Policy, 35(2), 197–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2019.1571561
Prochaska, J. O., & Velicer, W. F. (1997). The transtheoretical model of health behavior change. American Journal of Health Promotion, 12(1), 38–48. https://doi.org/10.4278/0890-1171-12.1.38
Shapiro, S. L., Astin, J. A., Bishop, S. R., & Cordova, M. (2005). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for health care professionals: Results from a randomized trial. International Journal of Stress Management, 12(2), 164–176. https://doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.12.2.164
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750
Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., & May, A. (2006). Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427(6972), 311–312. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02135
Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(19), 6829–6833. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801268105
Tang, Y.-Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916