Life hack

WE live in a world full of hackers.

I first heard of hackers in the early 2000s—a mysterious subgroup of people with otherworldy abilities to bend the internet to their will. Want to edit a photo? Hacker. Want to get inside the World Bank and steal information? Hacker. Most of my (mis)information regarding them had to do with watching movies, so I apologize.

Nowadays, hackers aren’t limited to cyberspace. “Life hackers” are trying to find the cheat code of our human anatomy and, like a good video game, exploit it for maximum productivity and gold rings (hello, Sonic the Hedgehog).

It’s almost like a virtual circus show we can’t tear our eyes from: people hawking how to “get 100% brain productivity on only five hours of sleep” or “save for your travel fund while only setting aside 10 pesos a day.” It’s strange, but I get it. Wouldn’t we all want to make our lives better by tweaking just one or two things from our routines?

Let’s get one thing straight: I love life hacks. On most days, I practice intermittent fasting—eating my first meal of the day around lunchtime. I was told it would make my brain fog go away and that it will be better for my body to be in a “feasting” state only about eight hours a day, and it worked—for me at least.

I’m also learning to make my money work for me—putting it in certain low-risk, steady-state investments that allows it to grow while I’m going about my mainline work. Life hacks are great for pointing out certain “blind spots” in our daily life that we can optimize.

The problem for me is when people turn life hacks into shortcuts.

For every good hack, there are 10 bad ones. When someone says we can get in the best shape of your life exercising once a week for 15 minutes, something’s up. It comes back to one of my biggest principles in life: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What this does is promote a false narrative that with little to no work, we can achieve great results. Sounds good, doesn’t work. To reiterate: life hacks are a complement, not a replacement, for good ol’ fashioned elbow grease. They help us work smarter; they don’t eliminate work altogether. I can intermittent fast all I want, but unless I actually get out there and use my newfound brain awareness, nothing’s going to come out of it.

It comes down to us treating life hacks for what they are: ideas on how to tweak our routines to get the most from our day. They are not cheat codes we input to absolve ourselves from actually having to do something.

Here’s a life hack: gather 20 seconds of courage to do something you are nervous about. Try new food, talk to that girl, get inside that gym—you can thank me later.  

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