when he said that to konohamaru, he meant that there is no do this and become hokage crap, you need to bust your ass to get there. konohamaru thought that if he could defeat sandaime he would become hokage
but everyone tries to optimise their training, you'd be stupid not to. naruto worked insanely hard for the rasengan, rasenshuriken and sage mode. working with kagebunshin is much much tougher than working solo, the fatigue accumulates and naruto was passing out all the time. he was training so hard he didn't even stop to eat, now if you consider that a shorcut fine by me. i don't consider optimising a training method a shortcut, that's just being smart. getting handed a power outright, that's a shortcut.
although i agree somewhat with the destiny part. it seems naruto and sasuke are being clashed together by destiny, although naruto seems to have a plan to change things. and neji has broken out of his destiny thanks to naruto