Hacking Life: Systematized Living And Its Discontents

Description

Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces and load the dishwasher; they employ a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as a time-management tool.They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age's creative class. Reagle chronicles the history of life hacking, from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack through Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. He describes personal outsourcing, polyphasic sleep, the quantified self movement, and hacks for pickup artists. Life hacks can be useful, useless, and sometimes harmful (for example, if you treat others as cogs in your machine). Life hacks have strengths and weaknesses, which are sometimes like two sides of a coin: being efficient is not the same thing as being effective; being precious about minimalism does not mean you are living life unfettered; and compulsively checking your vital signs is its own sort of illness. With Hacking Life, Reagle sheds light on a question even non-hackers ponder: what does it mean to live a good life in the new millennium? Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 1. Introduction......Page 14 Life Hacking Geeks and Gurus......Page 16 Practical Philosophy, Self-Help, and Systems......Page 18 Life Hacking’s Shades of Gray......Page 20 Nominal, Optimal, and Near Enemies......Page 22 2. The Life Hackers......Page 26 Alpha Geeks and Authorpreneurs......Page 27 43 Folders and Getting Things Done......Page 29 Lifehacker and the Rational Style......Page 32 The 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design......Page 34 Life Nomadic and Superhuman......Page 37 3. Hacking Time......Page 40 Time Thrift......Page 41 “Schedule Your Priorities”......Page 43 Polyphasic Sleep......Page 47 “Quadrupled My Productivity”......Page 48 Privilege and Exploitation......Page 51 Beggars in Spain......Page 55 4. Hacking Motivation......Page 58 The Science of Motivation......Page 62 Productivity Porn......Page 64 The Reproducibility Crisis......Page 65 Odyssean Goal Tracking......Page 69 The Rat Race......Page 72 5. Hacking Stuff......Page 76 Gear Lists and the Whole Earth Catalog......Page 77 The “Californian Ideology” and Cool Tools......Page 79 “Masculine, Entrepreneurial, Well-Educated, and White”......Page 82 From Much to Minimal......Page 86 The Counting Nomad versus KonMari......Page 88 The Dilemma of Stuff......Page 90 Minimalism and Millionaires......Page 92 6. Hacking Health......Page 96 Data’s Meaning......Page 98 The Transhuman Roots of Becoming Superhuman......Page 99 “Butter Makes Me Smarter”......Page 102 Experts, Experience, and Uncertainty......Page 105 Supplements and Self-Help......Page 109 It Works for Me......Page 111 Soylent, Choice, and Control......Page 113 Wanting to Believe......Page 117 7. Hacking Relationships......Page 120 “Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend”......Page 121 The Origins of Pickup......Page 123 Optimal: Two Bisexual HB10s......Page 125 Nominal: The Challenge of Being Likable......Page 127 Data and Dating......Page 130 Yootling and Marriage......Page 132 “You Are Doing It Wrong”......Page 135 The Right Tools for the Job......Page 137 8. Hacking Meaning......Page 140 The Ancient Stoics......Page 142 Stoicism’s Translators......Page 143 The Stoic Life Hacker......Page 145 Mindfulness and Its Translators......Page 148 Apps, Gadgets, and Woo......Page 151 Look Outside Yourself......Page 154 Lost in Translation......Page 158 9. Blinkered......Page 160 “I Choose Me”......Page 162 Bending the Rules......Page 164 The Blinkered Path......Page 166 1. Introduction......Page 170 2. The Life Hackers......Page 172 3. Hacking Time......Page 175 4. Hacking Motivation......Page 179 5. Hacking Stuff......Page 183 6. Hacking Health......Page 187 7. Hacking Relationships......Page 191 8. Hacking Meaning......Page 194 9. Blinkered......Page 199 Index......Page 202