If you are unsure of what it means to hack your life, you might assume that the act would be disturbingly violent. However, lifehacking, a term coined by Danny O’ Brien in 2004 during a technology talk, now means—at least by my best attempt at giving a definition—a method of improving a regular system in one’s life in order to allow that system to function more easily, simply, or quickly. It's a DIY-or Do-it-yourself kind of mindset. In other words, someone might set an egg timer so that he doesn’t spend 3 hours mindlessly surfing the internet. There are loads of websites popping up on a regular basis now devoted to offering lifehacking tips and tricks. One of the originals, though, is lifehacker.com, a blog edited by Gina Trapani, which presents new ways of improved life management tricks almost on an hourly basis. The first line of their about page reads, “Welcome to Lifehacker, an award-winning daily blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you work and live smarter and more efficiently.”
Time did an article on lifehacking earlier this year that covers the new self-improvement-for-geeks phenomenon. The article by Jeremy Caplan begins, “Beneath the bits and bytes that shape the character of Silicon Valley, there's a booming digital subculture committed to the art of self-improvement, geek style. It's known as life hacking, and it's all about sweating out the best ways to crank through e-mail, sabotage spam, boost productivity and in general be happier.” Happier? Indeed. Maybe we could all take a tip from a techie—we might just get through all of those e-mails a bit more quickly.
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