Complex Numbers

Hack This

Worth reading if you want a decent takedown of "lifehacks." Or even if you don't. Especially if you don't.

https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-problem-with-hack-culture-b0ddf43784e9

The Problem with ‘Hack’ Culture
Most of it is complete, utter bullshit

I mean, really, it's right there in the subhead.

Venture down the self-help aisle of any bookstore and you’ll see it littered with titles about hacks, quick fixes, burning fat, and accessing mystical sounding theta brainwaves.

Lifehack: Don't browse the self-help aisle. Better yet, if you know there's something you want to improve, go to Amazon, find appropriate books and read the reviews. Yeah, yeah, I know, support your local bookstore and all that. But don't feed their "self-help" beast.

But the internet age has ushered in a whole new era: The maddening proliferation of hope — clouded in broscience.

"Broscience." I'm not sure I like that. But it's apt.

Use polyphasic sleep to hack your energy levels.

That one might work if, like me, you're naturally polyphasic, and can adjust your schedule accordingly. Then again, it might not.

The problem with all of these grand promises? The vast majority of them are bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit wrapped in complex sounding broscience.

Sturgeon's Law again. 90% of all published works are crap.

Now here's the part that addresses us as writers.

But the reality is that the onus shouldn’t be on the consumer of information; it should be on the writer, speaker, or influencer who has the power to make a difference. When you have a platform, you have a responsibility.

The downside of free speech is that everyone can exercise it. Wait, that's the upside. No, the actual downside is that it requires discerning consumers of said speech, which is difficult if you don't even know what to watch out for. I'll mention a few keywords to watch out for, apart from "hack:" cleanse, homeopathic, natural, ancient. I'm sure you can think of more.

For too long now, we’ve focused on the details, the finishing touches, the small things that may or may not work: Why am I concerned with whether or not I put cream or butter in my coffee but OK with binge drinking at the bar a few times a month?

Because I don't drink coffee but I do drink beer? Oh, wait, the author apparently thinks binge drinking is bad. Never mind.

In our diets, we go nuts over whether 80 percent of calories should be carbs or fat, all the while overlooking that a lot of what we eat — both carbs and fat — comes wrapped in plastic and bears little resemblance to anything found in nature.

I keep seeing that the true enemy is "processed" or "overprocessed" foods, but I haven't found a good definition for those, yet. I mean, technically, cooking is a process, and - raw-food-diet bullshit aside - cooking is what makes a lot of food more nutritious and digestible. Potatoes, for example. It's probably what allowed our ancestors to evolve these great big brains that most of us don't use.

We are seeking the silver bullet when the reality is we need to zoom out and nail the basics before we even consider the final 2 percent.

And there it is, folks, the buried lede.

It’s for these reasons that I wrote The Passion Paradox and Peak Performance. Am I a self-help guru? No way! But I do feel qualified to bring the focus back on the concepts that actually make a difference.

Look, dude, I'm not saying you're wrong, or that you're right. But I'm not clicking on those book links. Isn't the major part of the problem that too many people "feel qualified" to do this or that, without being actually qualified? Also, I hate reading this far along a halfway decent article only to find that it's a commercial in disguise. Bah.

So, I'm done here. I feel like he has good points, but those are somewhat muted by the fact that he's doing exactly what he's railing against.

Of course, I "feel qualified" to make these assessments.