The title had me worried it was going to be a melodramatic open-source screed. I was pleasantly surprised. And I agree entirely with the point. By opening our lives, we're providing people with access to information they never had widescale before.
I've grown up reading things where people just talk about life nonstop. AskReddit, certain forums on SomethingAwful, Metafilter, smaller sites. And as a result, I find that I come across many situations in life where I have a good idea of what to do because I've been privy to others' thoughts. I also get the same thing in reverse: People who've read things I write email me pretty frequently to say that what I've wrote has somehow impacted their life.
That's what I think lifehacking really is. It's gathering data about the human race and figuring out hacks to improve performance, which sounds utterly nerdy but is really more like Psychology 2.0, psych that's guided, for better or for worse, by the masses. It's exciting and I think we'll see awesome things come from it, even if it takes another two generations.
I've grown up reading things where people just talk about life nonstop. AskReddit, certain forums on SomethingAwful, Metafilter, smaller sites. And as a result, I find that I come across many situations in life where I have a good idea of what to do because I've been privy to others' thoughts. I also get the same thing in reverse: People who've read things I write email me pretty frequently to say that what I've wrote has somehow impacted their life.
That's what I think lifehacking really is. It's gathering data about the human race and figuring out hacks to improve performance, which sounds utterly nerdy but is really more like Psychology 2.0, psych that's guided, for better or for worse, by the masses. It's exciting and I think we'll see awesome things come from it, even if it takes another two generations.