from Hacker News

Down with lifehacking

by andreipop on 7/29/13, 2:08 PM with 55 comments

by danso on 7/29/13, 2:53 PM
Oh boy, another vapid commentary by Evgeny Morozov, following the tried and true formula of:
1. Pick topic close to the heart of techies 2. Deride the worst/most fanatical examples of said topic in practice 3. Make non-techies feel safe and smug that techie people are just mindless electric sheep
Because the idea that there's a way to streamline your life's mundane tasks so that you can do something other than watch cat videos is just beyond imagination. Nope, people obsessed with efficency are automatons who would only use that free time to just work harder and/or view cat videos.
This essay is even more nonsensical than his usual. It's like he ran out of wild anecdotes abo life hacking and had to find other words to which "hacking" has been appended.
by jgrahamc on 7/29/13, 2:42 PM
"Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time—so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?"
Sure, yes. But there's nothing new about this and it really doesn't have anything to do with lifehacking or Silicon Valley.
Speaking from the lofty position of having letter of the month in Time Management Magazine in the early 1990s I can tell you that people have been enthusiastic about this kind of thing forever! And some people will be so enthusiastic that they'll totally overdo it and lose the benefit.
by enraged_camel on 7/29/13, 4:30 PM
One thing I remember from watching the Inbox Zero presentation [1] by Merlin Mann a couple of years ago was the analogy he used involving a burger joint.
Paraphrasing, he said that lifehacking is similar to optimizing the process of taking orders and organizing them, but at some point those orders actually need to be fulfilled. Otherwise you'll end up with a lot of angry customers, who don't care about what awesome optimizations you're doing behind the scenes!
This is not to say that lifehacking is useless. Rather, the emphasis is that ultimately, you have to get things done.
[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9UjeTMb3Yk
by eksith on 7/29/13, 2:36 PM
How to "life hack":
```
  1) Obtain organizer.
  2) Use it.
```
I think some of us like to experience the joy of inefficiency to some degree provided it doesn't hinder too much of productivity.
"within the globalist neoliberal paradigm, sleeping is for losers" This breaks my heart so much. Sleeping, the thing I'm not able to do very well in the first place, is one of the most sacred activities I can engage in. The last thing I need is to make it shorter (albeit allegedly more efficient).
Edit: Er... brain fart grammar. I need more Lifehacking!
by knowtheory on 7/29/13, 2:53 PM
For someone who has spent a great deal of time decrying how facile and shallow TED has become, Evgeny Morozov has really doubled down contrarianism for contrarianism's sake without contending with irony therein.
He styles himself as a truth teller to some sort of "techno-elite", but he's really just a troll with nothing interesting to say.
by orofino on 7/29/13, 2:43 PM
To me this article 1)says very little 2) conflates 'lifehacking' and 'lifestyle design'
Lifehacking to me has always been about little things you do to reduce friction and mundanity in your day to day. Tim Ferris promotes something else entirely which advocates an entirely different lifestyle, fueled by passive income, allowing you to focus on What You Want™.
[Sorry for the buzzword bingo above, I felt I needed to embrace it to adequately articulate the thoughts.]
by theorique on 7/29/13, 4:22 PM
How one-sided. Anything worthy can be done to excess, but that line is drawn by the individual.
Take running as an example - the couch potato thinks the weekend 5K duffers are "running to excess"; the 5K duffers think the person training for a marathon is "running to excess"; the marathon trainers think the ultra-runners are "running to excess"; the ultra-runners think the 72-hour endurance runners are "running to excess".
As long as a person's lifehacking "system" is contributing to their well being, and serving them, who's to say it's wrong? If someone steps back and says, "ok, I'm working this system too much and I want to change it", then that's fine too.
Really, people - live and let live - it's not that hard.
by jonmc12 on 7/29/13, 6:29 PM
“Business destroys creativity, self-knowledge, emotional well-being, your ability to be social,” - does not seem to reconcile the partition of mental activity presented in "The Role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance" (summary: http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the...) - notably, "The importance of rest" has its own section.
Productivity tools are not destructive, they are just useful in context and inefficient when mis-applied - just like any other tool.
by tomasien on 7/29/13, 2:47 PM
"You should spend time doing nothing" is a life hack. Life hacks aren't all about doing more more efficiently, what do you think the title "The 4 Hour Work Week" denotes? MORE work?
(On the record - not a fan of the 4HWW)
by ChikkaChiChi on 7/30/13, 12:25 AM
Lifehacking is when someone thinks of the idea to use a paper binder to keep your cords tidy.
I hereby propose a vote on calling what TFA is talking about as either:
A) Todo Voodoo B) Efficiency Masturbation
Feel free to use either free of charge. I just open sourced them and now intend to have Tim Ferriss write a book about how you can do all this in only four hours a week!
by jff on 7/29/13, 5:44 PM
I thought the time saved by lifehacks was usually devoted to writing blog posts about how you've been doing X for 3 days now and it's amazing.
by 650REDHAIR on 7/29/13, 2:46 PM
Lifehacking --> Quantified self
by Dewie on 7/29/13, 2:48 PM
> Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time—so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?
Is there anything more self-defeating than investing money to get more money, only to reinvest the profits of the investment?