I’m a Life Hacker and Sometimes Still Sucks
I have to admit: I work for Lifehacker. I write about how to get things done faster, more efficiently, and cheaper. However, I still fail. I am distracted. I’m wasting my money. And I don’t follow every piece of advice I’ve written about. But it normal.
You Can’t Follow Every Advice
Before I became a Lifehacker writer, I was a Lifehacker reader. At that time, I still did not have my life completely, and I was intrigued by these people, who seemed to have everything figured out. They carried notebooks with them to jot down every idea . The notebook was automatically scanned into Evernote . They stand at their treadmill every morning and when the Pomodoro timer goes off , they spend exactly thirty minutes working on each idea, and then take a thirty minute break . They would repeat the cycle until lunchtime, and then remove food from the refrigerator, which was planned at the beginning of the week . They stopped responding to emails at exactly 9 pm and turned off their screens for at least an hour to get a better sleep. They fell asleep at exactly 10 pm and woke up at 5:30 am, which is exactly five sleep cycles 90 minutes late. What a perfectly organized, structured and productive day!
It’s great and all. But it also lacks flexibility. Before I started at Lifehacker, I wrote for Android Police. The job required many atypical hours, such as lighting a Rovio product presentation at 4am . What a great opportunity to work on a very visible key project that has been a priority for my boss ! However, he broke many “rules.” This is an extreme example, but the bottom line is that too strict adherence to a perfectly structured schedule could lead to missed opportunities. It’s all about compromise.
In the end, I found that as a reader I had the impression of being super productive, which was unrealistic. I thought I was doing it wrong because sometimes I was relaxed and sometimes I didn’t go to bed on time. Or because I read my phone at night. Everyone, even those I thought were the perfect examples of productivity, have weekends and bad habits. Or there are some tips they just ignore . Following every piece of advice is impractical, overwhelming, and ultimately not going to help you be more productive on its own.
Of course, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that doing whatever you are told on the Internet is not a good idea. Instead, start with what you really want to do in life and use tricks to help you get there. In my case, I wanted to be more organized in my projects (I was a video editor at the time) and write more disciplined every day . These specific goals helped to understand which tips to look out for and which ones to ignore. In fact, ignoring some of the tips was almost more important than the ones I followed.
To filter out the right tips to follow, start by examining your own patterns . Take a look at your weekly routine and pick two problems you want to solve . Write down what you would rather do and start looking for advice from there. Ignore anything else that does not apply to these two goals. Even if it’s still an issue you want to work on, put it off for later. Focusing your efforts will not only help you to better implement this new habit, but it will fix one problem, boost your self-confidence , and everything else will become easier.
Guilt is not the best motivator
Sometimes I write tips on how to do something, and then I don’t follow them myself. I’m sorry about that. I also felt bad when I was a reader, and constantly saw people talking about their budget tables and strict sleep schedule, and I felt like a failure for eating too much outside the house. The more I read about how to improve my life, the more I realized what I could have done but did not, and the worse I felt. You only get to see so many people doing better than you before you realize how trashy you are in life and collapse guiltily on the couch to watch TV. The point is, guilt is a terrible motivator . If you feel guilty about the breaks, you won’t be able to relax. This can lead to burnout, which is a real and serious problem .
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar: you start out feeling guilty because you haven’t tried this GTD thing, and so you feel guilty about not doing enough. Because you feel bad about not getting enough done, you avoid taking a vacation . Then you read an article that talks about how badly you fail by not taking a vacation. So you finally break down and grab one, but you work all the time . You come back tired, wanting to have a vacation after the vacation, and start the cycle over.
It is not a problem how efficiently you work. In fact, just because you are lazy does not mean that you are lazy. The problem is that you are expecting too much of yourself. If you are stressed at work, hate your job, and feel like it’s not worth the effort, it’s probably your own fault . It sounds counterintuitive, but if you can’t come to terms with the fact that sometimes you will be unproductive, sometimes ineffective, and sometimes just screw up, then you are in the wrong place to really improve.
You can start a fight with this mental self-destruction, learning to accept failure and to treat them as a learning experience , not as an experience , leading to a sense of guilt. Train yourself to stop being a cynical asshole , especially towards yourself. There isn’t one perfect piece of advice on how to do this, but keep in mind that many successful people still feel like scammers . As Louis S.K. pointed out, if you are at least 70% decision-making , that is usually enough. Don’t be so hard on yourself that you are missing the remaining 30%.
Life is more than advice, tricks, and getting things done
Two weekends ago, I drove to Nashville to meet people I’ve never met and take part in LARP. Judge me if you like, but I have never had such an experience. It was exciting for me, and now I have a story to tell. It also meant that I wrote these articles sitting on my bed at 8:00 pm on Sunday before driving four hours to get home and getting about five hours of sleep.
To achieve this, I broke a lot of rules. I worked weekends (which I do often), break my sleep patterns, and talk publicly on the internet about attending LARP. All of this, I was told, could have serious consequences. On the other hand, I have written several articles that have done well and have had fun experiences that will provide me with entertaining stories to tell later. I did everything wrong and it was still satisfying.
Lifehacker’s mantra has always been “Tips, Tricks and Downloads to Achieve Your Goals.” And this is a noble goal . But there is more to life than just doing work. This does not mean that the clues are wrong. I usually remember the 90 minutes rule about sleep because it helps me sleep better. I use Dropbox and Remote Desktop to get my work done when I’m away from my desktop and don’t want to tell me how great keyboard shortcuts are .
What this actually means is that the rules are more like guidelines. You have things you want to do in your life, and that’s okay. You’re about to screw up, lose control, or just don’t care about some advice. I wish I could tell you that I was planning to work at 8:00 pm on Sunday that weekend, but the truth is that I found a place to post my work and did it locally and I was horrified that I didn’t go to bed until 2 am. Sometimes life gets in the way. And that’s okay.
The work can be very rewarding. This is how you can spend time with friends and family. Or watch movies. Or stay up late . Or lose weight . What brings you satisfaction is up to you. So don’t be discouraged if you screwed up or don’t have a perfectly optimized life. If you are spending time looking for your own happiness and you will be better this year than last year, it is not hard to be wrong. It’s just aman .