A “lifehack” refers to any trick, shortcut, ability, or novelty method that increases a person’s productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in both their personal life and career. When most people hear the word hack, they think of people finding a way to get into a computer to steal a person’s identity or do something equally harmful. What the word hack really means is just a clever way of doing something. In the computer world, a hack generally refers to an inelegant but effective solution to a specific problem. The term “lifehack” became known in the early 2000s to depict an inelegant or clever solution to any life challenge. A simple example is a person with a scratch on a new car. It might cost \($1,000\) to have an auto body shop repair the scratch and apply fresh paint. Using a matching color of nail polish to cover up the scratch demonstrates a lifehack in that it is a clever \($5.00\) solution to a \($1,000\) problem. More broadly, most people have routines in their lives. Without even thinking about it, most of us have a set way for how we get up in the morning, how we get to work, how we handle our email, how we manage our calendar, and so forth. Because we are entrenched in how we do things, we fail to realize that there might be better ways. So, while hacking into someone’s computer to steal their identity is inappropriate, hacking into your own life can be very good, in that it is a practice or habit of examining how you do things and continually asking, “Is there a more efficient and/or a more effective way?” So how do you become a better lifehacker? One suggestion is to take 10 minutes at the end of each day and think about the things that consumed most of your time and energy. You might think to yourself, “I spent a full hour sorting through my email.” A simple Google search on “how to save time checking email” will produce several results with useful time-saving suggestions. Also, specific resources are available for people who want to enhance their lifehacking skills. One is the lifehacker blog (www.lifehacker.com). The blog serves up a continuous stream of lifehacking tips. One of the headlines the day we wrote this feature (February 22, 2023) was “How to Get Actually Useful Feedback from Your Boss.” The lifehacker blog has a newsletter to which you can subscribe for free. Another resource is Make Use Of (www.makeuseof.com), which is a website that provides hacks and tips to make better use of the digital world in which we live. The title of one article on the day we wrote this feature was “How to Make Power Napping Easier Using Your Smartphone.” Another article on this site was “How to Design Your Own Zoom Background.” Another way to become a better lifehacker is to be on the lookout for articles that contain lifehacking tips and incorporate the best tips into your daily routines. For example, some time ago one of the authors of this text ran across a Business Insider article titled “15 Highly Useful Life Hacks You Can Learn in a Minute or Less.” One of the tips was that to find a specific text in a web page, a person should press the control key and the F key at the same time ( ). Pressing that combination of keys simultaneously allows one to search a web page just like one can search a MS Word document. One of this text’s authors uses that tip frequently and believes that doing so saves time and effort. Another tip in the same article was titled “Never prematurely send an email again.” The tip, or lifehack, was that when you are writing an email, fill in the addressee last. That way you will never accidentally click and send an email prematurely again....

Discussion Questions:

1. Consider the following statement: “Lifehacking skills are really important for entrepreneurs because they are typically strapped for time and resources.” Do you agree with the statement? If so, why? If not, why not?
2. To what degree do you have an interest to increase your lifehacking skills? How do you plan to go about achieving your objective?
3. Spend some time looking at the lifehacker blog (www .lifehacker.com) and pick one suggestion that you think you can incorporate into your daily life. Describe the suggestion and why you selected it.
4. Go to www.1000lifehacks.com, which is another lifehacker site. What seems to be this site’s focus? Identify an article or video posted on the site that you can use and explain how you will use what you found.