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?
Author(s): Joseph Michael Reagle Jr
Series: Strong Ideas
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 217
Tags: Technological Innovations: Social Aspects, Self-help Techniques: Social Aspects, Quality Of Life
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
