In a clip that has escalated to meme status, motivational speaker Ed Mylett claims that he “manipulated time” by splitting his day into thirds, therefore somehow tripling his productivity so he can crush others in the marketplace. The outlandishness of the clip was easy to criticize. Commenters wrote, “This is why you don't mix hallucinogens, steroids, and speed kids” and, referring to Mylett’s quip about humans “living in caves” a mere 300 years ago, “[...] I was convinced Shakespeare had a house, but guess not.” Not only does this advice fail to make logical sense because we all still have the same amount of hours in a day, but it also reveals something about the absurdity of these hacks in general. By claiming he could bend time and space to his advantage, he unintentionally revealed just how hollow this kind of advice often is. It also throws the whole motivation behind trying to "hack time" into question. He doesn't do it so he can spend more time with his family, volunteer in his community, or even engage with activities that the average person might struggle to find time for in their busy lives. He follows this schedule so he can "kick your butt."
Most of us want to improve. We’re constantly looking for ways to be better people who do better things and feel better about ourselves. It’s a universal desire, and a vulnerable one at that. Content creators know this and use it to their advantage, peddling advice that purports to help us. But this side of the large umbrella of self-help content, one that skews toward the entrepreneurial tech bro, tries to solve problems but ends up creating them.
A tweet that recently captured millions of eyeballs exemplifies this issue. The author suggested, “Get your groceries delivered and save two hours per week.” By skipping time perusing the aisles, @zekramu claimed you could increase your working hours and thus make up for the cash you spent on delivery. Not only is this dubious advice mathematically speaking, it misses the point. The two hours (a generous timeframe, at least for the amount of grocery shopping most people need to do) spent at the market each week is not "lost time" on which you should capitalize. It’s part of being a human. It’s part of what connects us.
Grocery shopping is a unifying chore (at least for the vast majority of us), one that necessarily drags us away from our working lives. Taking this advice to its logical end, we should outsource all of our daily tasks so we can have more time to work to pay for the outsourcing of those tasks. Then we are left to be automatons whose main purpose is to generate income. This hack drives us to a more soulless world. When we stop going to the grocery store, we lose something. We lose the connection with your butcher, who will tell you which cuts are the best today. We lose out on the chance to run into our neighbor and spark up a conversation about how much we love tomato season. We lose the impetus to get out of the house and engage in our community, and we lose the valuable time away from the pressures of “success” as it is defined by these online pundits. When we automate everything, we lose sight of normalcy.
via @bobbbaaaay
Life hacks are a perennial form of internet content. As a collective audience, we love to watch videos about how to bend our lives to make them more efficient, more productive, more meaningful. We consume morning routine after morning routine, hoping that we will absorb their aspirational habits by osmosis. But at this point in internet history, we’re smart enough to know that the main reason this content exists is to make money for those who create it. The more outrageous the take, the more engagement the post gets, and the more revenue comes in via ad revenue, book sales, and online courses and coaching. To fall victim to this advice would be to play into the hands of an algorithm that rewards absurdity, and it would behoove us as an audience to stop and wonder what we’re supposedly saving time for.
Sure, some time-saving hacks might free us up for things that we’d rather be doing. Paying for a wash-and-fold service instead of hauling your duds to the laundromat every week might give you more time to paint watercolors or make soup or whatever it is you enjoy doing. But this is not the mindset behind these internet-native “hacks.” They only claim to save us time so that we can exploit our freedom for cash, with the bonus side effect that we’ll also have more time to scroll through their videos. Free time is a precious resource. We shouldn’t spend it consuming content that makes us feel bad about not optimizing it.