Hack your life

There seems to be much on the net these days about hacking your life. After a fruitless day of time-wasting shopping (for boots, winter shoes, clothing that lives up to its exorbitant price in quality and style...), I can agree with the sentiments.

So how exactly do you hack your life? Well, it's all in the tweaking, really.

For instance, you could call in the What Not To Wear girls to sort your image - to slap you upside the head and pull in your wobbly bits with great big "miracle knickers", to get you into things I haven't yet seen in any South African shop, in sizes apparently only the UK makes. Believe me, they don't have them here - I tried the entire morning to find them.

You could invest in a book to (Re)Design Yourself, at least the bits you have control over. And do more than simply read it.

You could hack anything from your grocery list to your book collection, your office space to monitoring the baby. Perhaps in the future it will also mean you can find your keys...

It's not about a once-off makeover. It's all about working smarter and quicker in the secondary things in life, in order to make more space and time for the bigger things in life. It's a rethink of how we view small irritations and time-wasters, and ways to eliminate them.

If that requires someone else to plan your wardrobe, tell you how to manage your time or provide you with a do-it-all gadget to keep you organized, then I'm all for it!

Think about it. You've probably hacked your life already. You've got Flickr storing your photos, GMail giving you access to your email from everywhere, a WiFi connection keeping you in contact with the folk back home, and Skype for phonecalls. You may have a Leatherman (if you're the outdoors type) - a many-in-one tool kit. You likely have a no-defrost-necessary fridge. Your car beeps if it's low on something essential and the coffee machine switches on at a set time. Your family reads your blog so you don't have to repeat your news. You have caller ID on the phone and spam filters on the email. You have a washer & dryer combo that requires only one button to be pushed. Your microwave makes an entire meal in 2 minutes. You have an automatic door on the garage and all your friends nubmers stored in the cellphone. You buy and sell online, and it's delivered to the door. You order in when you don't have time to cook. Totally hacked.

Further reading:
LifeHacker.com
What is LifeHacking?