Life Hacking: give it a name and it becomes a movement.
I’ve been looking into GTD and other related productivity theories of late; they appeal to the crunchy-process-oriented geek in me. There’s been a lot of GTD-related talk in the sections of the blogosphere I find most appealing, too, which is where I stumbled across it in the first place.
I’m not entirely sure, yet, what links the two, but: the bloggers talking about GTD also talk about something that immediately struck a chord with me: life hacks. That’s the term for all those little life-managing strategies we’ve all developed for ourselves over the years; it originally started as a term for the scripts, hacks and workarounds that programmers developed as tools for themselves, but the phrase has since been expanded to apply to any productivity-enhancing strategy. Life hacks are really just ‘tips and tricks for managing one or more facets of your life’, and range from the really trivial to the brilliantly insightful.
The Baltimore Sun recently featured a somewhat patronising article on “Lifestyle Tips“, referring to the phenomenon. It does have a few links to the major sites; here are my favourites:
- Lifehacker and Lifehack, both of which feature hacks from the technological to the really, really simple. For my money I prefer the former, since it has a bunch of decently indepth articles and features.
- 43 Folders has a Life Hacks category, which often features the most innovative, impressive or useful hacks from the world of lifehacking. (My favourite recent hack is the Travel Tinker Trouble Kit, an Altoids tin packed with an impressive selection of tools and supplies.)
- For the latest developments, there’s always the del.icio.us ‘lifehacks’ tag page, and the relevant Technorati tags (‘lifehacks’ is the most popular, but there are some entries under ‘lifehacking’ and ‘LifeHack’ as well).
Now I’m trying to answer the question: what life hacks am I using? I know there are strategies and customised processes I’ve developed to deal with all kinds of little life challenges, but I can’t for the life of me think of any specifics at the moment.
Watch this space.
Technorati Tags: gtd, productivity, lifehacks
October 17th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Post-it notes!!
:)
It’s amazing how detailed they get isn’t it, right down to lifehack methods for washing and ordering your socks 0_0.
October 17th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Ooh, I just thought of another one, I recently put my daily backpack in order by buying 2 pencil cases and a CD carrier and putting things in them by category. Now when I need something I can get it out in a second, instead of spending minutes searching through the Black Hole Backpack O Doom™.
October 18th, 2005 at 2:31 am
Now, see, that’s a really good idea. You should describe your system and submit it to the 43Folders Wiki. :)