I was a wannabe hacker growing up. Long before Morpheus, I thought it was cool to be part of secret underground committed to thwarting society. I never did anything bad. My problem is that I had too much empathy for people that I might impact with adverse behavior. Now I had my fair share of pranks that I pulled off, but I never had the fortitude or resolve to make hacking my professional pursuit.
I did, however, become quite good at figuring out systems really quickly. I also had a knack for putting things together to solve a problem, even if those things were not intended for that purpose. I suppose if there is a value to hacking, the ethical hacker would be one focused on finding unique and creative ways to use limited and scarce resources to solve complex problems.
Like many of you, I came from a long lineage of farmers. If you have ever been employed on a farm, you learn very quickly the same skills as a modern day hacker. You have to be good at many things and you are constantly troubleshooting. You have to figure out how to get that tractor going, that pump working and calculate when to cut the hay with limited resources. There is no googling it, you are the google and everything you figure out all day is unique and challenging.
I am saying all of this for one purpose. The farmer and the hacker both learn very quickly to break things down to their subsystems. Learning to whittle the complex down to the discrete is at the core of problem solving. Which is where I come to the concept of life hacking.
The concept that I have come up with thus far is to determine really impactful habits that I can attempt for 365 days in a row. I have done this slowly, but consistently. I have failed at many but also been successful at many. This has in effect improved my life in many ways. I have successfully hacked into my typical self and tweaked my internal wiring to produce a better result.
Along the way, I have come back to the basic hacker skill set, which is to break the problem down to the absolute vital components. Once there, I am able to really consider the one thing that will have the greatest impact. That becomes my 365 habit candidate, my new life habit.
This methodology is far easier to achieve then an entire system all at once. Instead of trying to adopt an entire new healthy life style overnight, my process narrowed me down to one thing, run. I had far more progress at getting healthy by embracing that one thing than I would of by anything complex and expensive. Once you have narrowed your life challenge down to discrete systems, you will know you have identified this one thing by its inherent simplicity.
When performing that one thing for a long period of time, 365 days for example, you should see amazing results. The problem becomes if you are willing to keep the commitment going. If you can do that you will have discovered how to hack your life.
Guy Reams
