I know there are lots of people who are confused by the word hacking.
Hacking your life means finding shortcuts to achieve specific results in a faster, smarter way. An example would be learning how to play a guitar. You can try to play some random music and hope to be a good guitarist in a few years, or you can hack it and find a player who can mentor you, create and maintain specific plans for your skills, and help you to master the guitar many times faster.
Productivity, on the other hand, is all about making or creating more in the same amount of time. So if you have eight hours on any given Monday, or whatever day, you can do twelve short tasks instead of two, or you can find twenty equally valuable clients instead of three, etc. Productivity is more about using your time wisely and doing the maximum amount that you can in the most efficiently way possible.
At first glance, both of these terms seem quite similar if you look at them. The term productivity has been well known for a long time. The term hacking grew up in the last few years. The internet and access to tutorials about any possible skill on YouTube, Coursera, Udemy or others allows each one of us to become a master of any chosen topic.
There are specific differences that I find between productivity and hacking. There are different rules that drive them. With productivity you achieve your mastery by practicing some proven techniques, like strengthening your focus muscle, learning to stack many similar things together, having a list of things to do for the next day, etc. With life hacking you implement some tips, tricks and shortcuts to specific areas of your life, and you hope to achieve one thing in a more efficient way.
So if we make a simple equation:
normal time x productivity = 2 x more time
normal time x life hacking = 2 x more time,
then we can easily deduce that:
normal time x productivity x life hacking = 4 x more time.
The obvious conclusion is that it is best to mix both productive skills with life hacking skills. You can then achieve a path to mastery in 2 and half years instead of in 10 years. Those remaining 7 1/2 years you can spend lying on a beach in the Bahamas. 😉
Go and start to learn some productive skills right now!
Read about focusing, stacking tasks, and breaking down and re-organizing. Read about life hacks on Lifehacker and learn a few of them that will be useful to your life right now! You will achieve your goals much faster!
