The Cult of Life Hacking and the End of the Dream of Ultimate Productivity

Life hacking is a kind of American self-help. It was practical and evidence-based.

Getting Things Done or GTD, promoted the idea of breaking tasks down into pieces and sorting them by how much time they'll take to accomplish, then allocating reminders. The goal is to free you from a mental to-do list running in the back of your thoughts, making it possible to focus all your energy on a task.

It is possible to spend so much time organizing your work that you never actually do any of it.

• Many of the early champions of life hacking never got to actually do the work and finally abandoned the tech world's preoccupation with productivity.
• Others became proponents of minimalism - where you get rid of most of your stuff and then focus more on the few things you keep.
• Life hacking developed into other forms too. One blogger wanted to write a book in three months while simultaneously attempting seventeen other missions.

Life hacking is a pursuit of the “creative class,” an exercise in box-ticking.

The ingenuity behind so many life hacking schemes could make one a more effective promoter for social improvement. The focus of hacking life is on hacking the self, but the focus is on a rather bland and limited part of the self in the process.