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"Life hacking" is a term that repels me. Modern life's demands are often insane. You don't hack it, instead you should run away as far as possible.

Most current work environments consist of 8 hour long streams of interruptions. You could say that dealing with the interruptions is the actual work now, and the work that you were supposed to do has been relegated to being a nuisance.

Of course, this results in the birth of the entire GTD and "life hacking" fads, because people foolishly believe that this mess is somehow manageable.

What you describe above could be seen as withdrawal symptoms from persistent hyper-stimulation and hyper-responsiveness. People are so used to constant external stimuli that require attention and feedback at the workplace, that they need to recreate these situations at home.

I think that in this regard, television is an old medium, because it is content with you just sitting on your lazy ass.

You could say that dealing with the interruptions is the actual work now, and the work that you were supposed to do has been relegated to being a nuisance.

So we don't need evented dev environments so much as we need evented people?

Yeah, it's kind of funny how everyone thinks that because I'm a computer programmer I must have a fancy phone with a data plan and always return all my calls and texts and everything immediately. Not that I can blame them, in my experience many of my peers are that way.

It's irritating how sites like LifeHacker imply that you need to be going 100mph all day every day, working with the latest gadgets using the latest technology to make more money to buy more stuff.

Maybe some of us are perfectly fine just working our day job on our line of business software and then going home and hanging out with our families and playing with our dogs.

I still have LifeHacker on my iGoogle homepage, but I rarely actually read the articles aside from the "top download for the week" ones, which are sometimes interesting just to see what new stuff is out there.

The main problem is that most of their "hacks" are written in such a way that implies that you are WASTING YOUR LIFE if you aren't following some kind of strict 37 Signals approved code and micro-managing every aspect of everything to death.

I kind of wish "life hacks" as we know them today could be replaced with a simple set of tricks, such as "melt a pen cap to remove weird screws" or "blanch onions to make peeling them easier". A blending of classic tricks (like the onions) and modern tricks (pen cap).

99% chance you don't need a cell phone turned on 24x7

Agreed, my phone automatically powers off at 11PM and on at 7:30AM, and I barely ever notice. I do notice the improved battery life though.

99% chance you don't need a stupid GPS guiding what you do, where you drive

While true, the cost of a GPS unit is so low it is easy to throw one in the glove box for that 1% when you do need it.

I realize this question is entirely contrary to the OP's point, but I really must know: how do you get your phone to automatically turn off and on? It must be a hardware feature, and not an app, right?

Heh, this is a $20 dumbphone from AT&T (Huawei U2800A). It is probably a hardware feature, PC RTC wakeup style. Not sure if the various appphones can wake up at a time, though there ought to be apps or settings to shut down at a time.

On Android I doubt you can completely shut the phone down and wake it up again, but you can certainly kill the network on timers.

There are the more complicated battery saving apps that do stuff like kill 3G while your screen is off and overnight.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=be1ay.flymode&... would be a pretty simple way of solving the problem too.

My 3-year-old Japanese dumb phone does that. It's a pretty common feature.

I do nearly the same thing, just with flight-mode from 1am to 7am. N900 event editor.

However, I agree with the parent to some extent; I could live just fine without tech for as long as required, but on the other hand the information super-firehose is fun and stimulating in ways a walk in the park just isn't. Keyword: moderation.

>While true, the cost of a GPS unit is so low it is easy to throw one in the glove box for that 1% when you do need it.

They used to have these things calls "maps" that performed this job really really well. I think they were $10 for a really good one.

Haven't seen one of them in ages.

I personally find a GPS unit (or, now, a GPS app on my phone) to be way more convenient than a map. Safer, too, since I can pay more attention to the actual driving.

Sure, but the original point was about need, not convenience. Personally, I use google maps on my phone, since it's always in my pocket anyway.

"Need" is a difficult word to work with, here. Do you "need" electricity? Your ancestors got by fine without it. Beyond air, water, and food, you don't really need anything.

Also basic shelter. Often underrated when blocking out needs.

I have several in my car, and I make use of them. I find they are great for navigating freeways, but GPS is better in-town, particularly for locating an arbitrary house address or a business by name.

That's what Lifehacker used to be about. I don't know what it's about now since I can't see anything in the flood of posts.

Hey! Getting my app to do something of questionable utility in a completely stereotypical but pretty-looking way featured on Lifehacker is the keystone of my marketing plan!

I've never heard the pen cap thing before. That, sir, is genius.

The best hack I know is to shake a head of garlic between two bowls for about 30 seconds to peel every single clove!

I agree with you, but don't understand the OP. Why does he stick to the "life hacker" term at all? The lifehacker blog is terrible, but we have always defended the term "hacker" against popular interpretations (=cracker). Can we still save the term "life hacker"? For me, that'd be someone without a cellphone.

There's a actually an established term for most of your list: Early Adopters. A marketing euphemism for people who waste their life and money trying out products you throw at them. It can be fun, but when I see people on Twitter with that term in their bio, I can't help but facepalm.

And then there's another group of people - those who tune their tools forever.

Both obsessions are incredibly common on HN. One harmless case in point, this submission on the front page left me clueless:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4012862

How many people on this planet have that many management duties that exchanging all stock apps is worth the time? Is it a Zen garden thing? (Sorry author - I have actually at half of those apps too :) )

Can we still save the term "life hacker"? For me, that'd be someone without a cellphone.

That would be me.

I don't own a cellphone since 2004. I've got tired of being constantly available (and disrupted), so I ditched the damn thing. It may not be practical for everybody, but it works for me. The world has its own pace and I have mine.

For me, the biggest inconvenience of not having a cellphone are those businesses (websites) that insist on a "cellphone #" being a required field during a sign-up or when requesting a quote.

Disclaimer: I run my own show.

Good for you! If it wasn't for my 3 year old daughter I'd have done the same thing and gone completely phone-less. As it stands I like knowing that in an emergency, I'm reachable. Instead I use a family plan that equates to about 20 dollars a month for my share which includes unlimted calls and texts.

I think with 'smartphones' being so expensive that phone contract prices in general have gone up. So far I've never owned a smart-phone and hopefully I can stay away from that bloated cost.

Disclaimer: I live in suburban amerika in a moderate-sized city with a low(er) cost of living. (Think LA is 1.5 x more expensive then here.)

...And yes, I threw in a Rammstein reference.

While I see the appeal of not having a mobile phone, I'd say that if you never had a smart-phone, you could give it a try before you say it's a bloated cost. It can actually improve your life in many ways and on my side it's definitely worth the cost even if I don't call anyone that often. I'd be even glad to own a smart-... thing. It doesn't have to have a phone function.

I do appreciate having a map with me, being able to transfer money wherever I am, take a photo without carrying a full camera, read a book on a plane without adding the weight to the luggage, have some music available when I'm bored, not having to print tickets when possible, having all my notes/calendar without carrying an actual notebook, and a number of other things that simply improve my life without any downsides.

Handlet?

No phone an a Wifi-only iPad might be a good choice for your first paragraph (assuming you have reliable wireless at your home), although the size would hinder mobility a decent bit.

Well, there always is "the small wifi ipad", which is called ipod touch ;). Actually, it may be a very good fit for that purpose.

You know I have an iPod touch and completely forgot about it haha

Brilliant. This reminds me of Knuth who stopped using email back in 1990 (!) [1]

[1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html

If only my work is as important as his is!

You can say that Knuth went of the grid to accomplish something extraordinary, but I did it once I've realized that my life is actually mine to live and that the world would not end if I'm not reachable. I quit being Atlas and the sky didn't fall.

<raises hand /> I don't have a cellphone either. I can't think of anything to add to the annoyances you already mentioned, but I would just like to point out that in terms of not being interrupted, ditching my cellphone is about the best thing I've ever done.

Well in the link you pointed to, the author did it over a period of years. We'll assume he's drunk and it's only 1 year and a day. He seems to mention 6 default apps. That means he replaced 1 default app every ~2 months. That doesn't really indicate a bunch of time spent on it. It's just changes over a significant period accruing. Personally, I just don't give a shit enough to do that to my phone, but I do with Emacs.

The term Lifehack is just a catchy term to describe ways of optimising the things you do, that has slowly turned into a way of short-cutting things so you can fit even more stuff that isn't fun into your day.

Realistically, the only reason you should use lifehacks is to free your time up for things you enjoy. I occasionally use the pomodoro technique to get things done, but gave up massive GTD lists a long time ago.

I used to use super-organised lists and manage my time GTD-style, but I found that the big problem was whatever I did, there was always more stuff to do. In the end I just left it. No matter what I do work-wise, there will always be more. All you can do is set time limits and work within them.

Nowadays I just use Wunderlist to list what I currently need to do that's urgent, then cut off at 6pm. I never take phone calls after 8pm unless it's from my wife or family, which makes my life a whole lot simpler outside of work. The only downside is that I typically work a 6 day week. Still working on that, but I'm grateful that what I do for work is mostly actually fun.

I was with you until the "extra U$ 1000 on your salary" :) .

I've got great plans for those (getting married, buying a house, having kids).

You do it all with money? No, money can help, certainly. But I think the point of the (grand)parent post was life is more important than its hacks. In this, you seem to be in agreement.

> I said fuck it and went for a walk at the park.

The ultimate lifehack. Living it.

People are complicating their lives just to decomplicate later.

Well, it's something to do 'til the undertaker comes.

http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/the-booklets/7.htm

Life hacking might sometimes be what my grandfather called "working to get out of work" or rather, doing a lot of fiddling in order to avoid actual work.

I know I'm definitely guilty of this at times.

Maybe next time someone hassles us with why we don't "lifehack", we can respond with the following:

"I don't want to clean my room to avoid writing a paper for my entire life"

> 99% chance you don't ...

This is kind of why most startups I see, or at least, with web apps, I think will do nothing.

The other thing with most of them and almost society in general now is this great congregating of all things whilst not improving. There's an amusing selfishness that's hypocritically common now too.

I also wonder how exactly they're measuring their lives. By the amount of trivial things they get done? By how efficiently they can read a message on the internet? A lot of it comes down to 'neat party tricks.'

I'm a lifehacker:

If I don't want to do it, it doesn't make me money, and its not a family obligation, I don't do it.

How I hack email:

Employees and close friends get my email address. No one else should have it.

How I hack my phone:

Employees, close friends, and attractive girls have it. I never answer an unknown number. I never return a call from a company, they have to send something in writing.

How I hack making phone calls to companies:

Personal assistant does it.

How I hack snail mail:

My lawyer picks it up once a week, important stuff I see eventually.

Lifehacking isn't about optimizing an annoying task, its about not doing it.

I'd argue that not doing something is just a form of optimization.

"Lifehacking isn't about optimizing an annoying task, its about not doing it."

I would argue that most of us don't have personal assistants and lawyers to deal with our petty problems 24/7.

Case in point:

My current smartphone is at the manufacturer getting repaired, it has been 3 weeks now. In the meantime I picked up one of those cheap-as-all-hell-pay-as-you-go-phones...

In three weeks I've needed to charge it one time... considering how little I actually use my phone I've spent about $20 on minutes and I haven't used half of them yet.

I'll actually be a little sad when my smartphone comes back, I'm thinking about telling the manufacturer to just keep it.

I actually have 2 phones: a Nokia phone for calling and texting, and a smartphone that acts as a mini-tablet, for the data plan, mail, Skype, internet and games.

The Nokia phone lasts several days, the other one can be dead by midafternoon and is charged daily.

This is my jam, my phone battery lasts forever. I've been using a Nokia e71 + iPod Touch/iPad (no data plan any more) combo for a couple of years now.

95% of the time I ever NEED internet, I am at the office, home, or at a friend's place with wifi. I would rather spend the ~$1000/year all my friends spend on their iphone on other hobbies/ activities.

I hear you -- couldn't have said it better. (Then again -- there was a 99% chance you didn't need to check HN at this point...)

> 99% chance you don't need a stupid GPS guiding what you do, where you drive

I wish I were part of this 99% :(

I hear ya. It might be true for some people that they don't need a GPS, but having an always in my pocket GPS whenever I'm in an unfamiliar neighborhood reduces my stress level a lot.

>99% chance you don't need the extra U$ 1000 on your sallary

Have you SEEN Bay Area rent prices? I've got a decent salary and it still takes a big bite out of what's left after CA taxes.

99% chance you don't need to live in Bay Area ...

Learn to live a more mindful live... google mindfulness and so on... get into this (minus the esoteric crap) and you will be amazed what changes it can bring.

The ultimate lifehack: figuring out how to eliminate all the things you're hacking.