There's no need for seq or jot. In bash you can replace `seq 1 10` with {1..10}. Or {01..10} if you want zero padding when using $i to label files.
I use an function called "up" that takes an optional integer argument to go up a certain number of levels. It won't necessarily be faster, but somehow I prefer it to typing lots of dots in a row:
function up () { if test $# = 1 ; then s=$( printf "%$1s" ); s=${s// /..\/}; cd $s ; else cd .. ; fi; }