lyrical musings

Editor’s Note: This post is not directed at anyone in particular, despite it’s relevance to some of our readers and personal experiences mentioned. The use of the term ‘you’ is a generic, despite bearing resemblance to Dustin Hoffman. Kidding.

There has been a new trend recently, this so-called ‘life-hacking’, which is defined by Wikipedia as:

Productivity tricks that users devise and employ to cut through information overload and organize their data.

Let me blunt: what a load of shit. If you’re so incredibly disorganized that you can’t control the flow of information in and out of your life, you need to change career fields; I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

A simple analogy:
You watch TV all day Saturday. At the end of the day, your eyes are tired, and you say to yourself “whoa, television overload”, you turn the TV off. Simple.

Are you really that addicted to your computer that you can’t turn it off? If so, stop reading this entry right now, close your browser, shut down your computer and go the hell outside. These people who read hundreds of blogs per day drive me insane - there is not a chance in hell that all of those entries are relevant to your life or work. Of those entries you read, how many do you really make use of? (Gaining some useless knowledge is not making effective use of a blog entry.) I’m willing to bet it’s far fewer than is worth all the time you’re investing in reading those entries.

I read THREE blogs on a SEMI-regular basis, two of which are authored by friends, and I read them only so I can keep abreast on their lives. I was recently informed of this new ‘life-hack’ called `going dark` - getting away from all blogs, emails, internet, etc. for some period of time. Another erroneous crock of dog crap. While this may be ‘great’ for managing your addiction to your computer, you fail to realize that all the people that normally know you as a well connected, savvy internet user now just see you as failing to respond to them in a timely manor, furthering your ‘information overload’ by sending an extra 10 emails saying “Did you get my last email?”

‘Life hacking’ does not simply apply to the digital world, or so lifehack.org claims. It’s about “living life to the fullest” - you’re telling me I need someone else to tell me how to live my life to the fullest? Come on people.

I skimmed (I couldn’t bring myself to read) this article. Again, who the hell are you to tell me how to life my life?

Originally, this post had a lot more anger, and a lot more valid points to argue that life-hacks are quite possibly the most useless thing since the fish pen:

Point being: take a couple of hours, go outside, and avoid living your life on your computer.