When you hear the word hacking you generally think of bad people getting into your computer
to steal your identity or do things like that.
That’s Whitson Gordon, the deputy editor of Lifehacker.com.
What the word hacking really means is finding a clever way to do something and often that's
a clever way around an established system.
And you’d be surprised at how many established systems there are in your own life.
Like, there is a way that you get up in the morning and a system for how you check your
email.
And the system you use for your calendar and on and on and on.
A lot of us are so entrenched in the systems we are a part of the way that we work day
to day that we don’t realize that there is an easier way to do something.
And so yeah, hacking into someone's bank account, that's really bad.
But, hacking into your own life?
That can be really good!
Because, the way that we do things generally sucks.
Life hacking can range from doing something to your wireless router to get better reception
to making your headphones stay better in your ear with a $2 pair of ear plugs.
It's just little things that make your day-to-day life easier and, uhh, more efficient.
So how do I go about hacking systems in my own life?
The first thing I would do is go about your work as normal and maybe take a little bit
of time at the end of each day, just 10 minutes to think about what you did that day.
Ya know, "This point in my day was really inefficient How can I maybe do that better?"
Do that everyday, you’ll start to see where maybe the inefficiencies are in your work.
Ya know, maybe you spend way too much time trying to wade through emails or you spend
too much time typing out certain things.
From there I just have to be really creative and think outside the box.
Are there any tricks that you have at that point?
Yah, if you say to yourself, "Yah, I spend so much time typing out this, this tedius
stuff all day long."
You go to Google, you search for, "How to save yourself time typing," and you'll find
not just a lot of solutions from people, but a lot of actual programs for computers that
people have written to deal with that specific problem.
What would be the purpose behind caring about lifehacks?
Ya know, most of us are wasting, just wasting X percent of our time on tedius tasks or wasting
X percent of our money on things we could easily make ourselves and by dedicating part
of your day to reorganizing your thoughts and, umm, and rehacking some of these little
things that you do everyday, you can save a ton of time, be more productive, have more
time to spend on the things that are really more important.
Hi, I'm Jonathan, and my name is Kirsten and we work here at Epipheo.
Watching that video made me think, "What are the things I do every day that I could do
more efficiently?"
Well, you could do crunches while you brush your teeth.
Yeah, after you.
I already do.
Wait, really?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
So, anyways, we would love to hear from you on your ideas on how you can hack your way
to a better life.
So, leave us a comment below.
And we want to thank Lifehacker.com for partnering with us on this video series.
We here at Epipheo love to make videos that will improve your life, so make sure you hit
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