A Life Observed: My LifeHacking Report Card
Nearly 2,500 years ago, Socrates made his now famous statement, "A life unobserved is not worth living." That is certainly true; without taking the time to observe and appreciate our behaviors, thoughts, ideas, hopes, and dreams... well, what's the point of it all? However, with the exponential advancement of technology and information access, I would posit that Socrates' statement is outdated. In a world where observation is cheap and ever-present (simply look at the heaps and heaps of self-illustrative garbage we all post on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, myself included), I would argue that today, it is the life unoptimized that is not worth living.Â
With so much technology and even more information at our fingertips, there is ample opportunity to "hack" or somehow optimize nearly every process in your personal, professional, or physical life. As an avid lifehacker, I've endeavored to do just that, hacking at least the 20% of my processes that can generate 80% gains. Perhaps I've ventured a bit far into the "deep end" with all of these hacks, but I'm really enjoying the process, the research, and I find the introspection and disassembly of every process to be fun and fascinating. As long as I'm maintaining physical and mental health, then the experiments can and will go on. Hey, it beats collecting salt shakers.Â
And so, here are my thoughts on the various "hacks" I've experimented with, where they stand, and my hopes for them. If you are unaware of some of the opportunities for "hacking" these processes, I hope that this post will turn you on to the idea, pique your curiosity, and maybe even do some experiments with a sample size of 1.Â
Sleep Hacking: This obvious candidate was one of my first health experiments, and has had varying success. While at times I have been able to subsist on as little as 4.5 hours a night of core sleep (with 1-2 naps of 22 minutes each), I find that my ability to do so is extremely dependent on the amount of work on my plate, the deadlines approaching, and my level of excitement about the work I'm doing. As of right now, sleep hacking is contradicting with other hacks in my life (see below), which I believe require that I sleep more. I was also influenced greatly by a recent podcast by Tim Ferriss featuring Kelly Starrett and Tim's physician, suggesting that cheating the sleep system is probably not a good idea. In any case, while I'll continue to use power-napping during the day for the various cognitive and memory benefits, I'll likely put sleep hacking on hiatus for now and experiment with longer periods of sleep than I've likely had since age 13. Worth noting, I'm regularly using SleepCycle for the iPhone, though I'm disappointed in the imprecision of the data. I'm hoping to rig a solution with the Melon band  (see below) to track actual brainwaves during sleep
Strength, Movement, Muscular Health: Since reading Kelly Starrett's landmark book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, I've taken a whole new approach to what physical health actually means. I came to realize that 99.9% of the world is, from a physiological perspective, dysfunctional, broken, and begging for chronic pain or avoidable muscle trauma. I promptly ditched my traditional gym membership and nearly every movement I performed week after week for 13 years, instead opting in to the cult of CrossFit. I invested in a standing desk. I've traded bicep curls and cable flies for foam rollers and lacrosse balls. I've come to realize just how weak I was before; in fact, my time at the gym was contributing to a number of chronic muscle imbalances, which caused pain and instability in what should have been a supple, healthy, 25-year-old body. Since drinking the CrossFit Kool-Aid and placing great emphasis not just on strength but also on mobility, my strength is up, endurance is at record highs, my knee and shoulder pain are mostly gone, and I feel like a freaking rock star. More on that below. This hack? A massive success.Â
Diet & Nutrition: I came to understand, first through Tim Ferriss' incredible Four Hour Body, and then through my own research, that grains and sugar are as close to poison as you'll find in a restaurant, outside of the cleaning supply cabinet. Everything you've ever been told about nutrition, besides "eat your veggies," is a bald-faced lie. Carbs kill, and fat, especially natural fats, promote massive health benefits. I started out with Tim's "Slow Carb Diet," eliminating all carbs except for legumes, 6 days a week. I've since changed things up a bit, fasting once a week, minimizing cheat day impact where possible, and cutting legumes to a bare, bare minimum (you can't avoid Hummus in Israel - you just can't). The results are incredible: I've gained muscle mass (heavier than I've ever been), dropped body fat (6 pack for the first time in my life), and my cholesterol, lipids, blood glucose, and other key indicators are all quite good. It's important to note that I'm not only using subjective measures (I receive comments on my physique almost daily now), but also objective ones; get your blood tested regularly, people. It's worth it.
Supplementation, Hormone Regulation, and Feeling Like an Alpha Lion: It's not enough to be a Supple Leopard, you also need to be an Alpha Lion. I came to understand, again through Tim Ferriss' work, that most men today are vastly Testosterone-deficient. And so, in addition to Tim's recommendations of all the usual suspects (garlic, green tea extract, fish oil, magnesium, zinc, policosanol, alpha-lipoid acid) and a few of my own favorite endurance and strength enhancing substances (creatine, glutamine, taurine, BCAA, and Beta-Alanine), I've modified my diet even further to include Brazil nuts and high saturated fat foods such as egg yolks and avocados. A lot of them. The results here are also promising. My testosterone in 2011 (age 24) was a "healthy" but unimpressive 563ng/DL. Recently, I was tested at 671ng/DL, despite the fact that my testosterone should have dropped a good amount as I approach my 30s. But forget the numbers; I can tell you that my voice has become deeper, my beard grows faster, my muscles heal faster, and I've received a number of comments from the opposite sex indicating increased attraction. Then there's the effects I won't write about. I'm telling you - Brazil nuts.Â
Other fun hacks: I'm writing this blog post with ice packs on my shoulders and stomach - yet another way to decrease my body fat by activating brown adipose tissue and thermogenic effect. I've also been taking cold showers, hacking my environment to promote health (see below), minimizing all alcohol consumption besides occasional wine, and taking strictly ice-cold showers. The benefits of most of this are apparent; I generate more body heat than before, I feel the difference in my skin's health, and I have more energy. I'm also waiting on a Melon Headband from Kickstarter (if they ever ship - they're over a year delayed), which is a sort of everyman's ECG sensor. The possibility of tracking my brain's activity and response to certain stimuli/situations is alluring, and can take my entire game to a whole new level.Â
Income Generation: Using methods described in Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Four Hour Work Week, I've set up a series of passive income businesses that involve little to no daily work, but which cumulatively net me 2-3x more income than I earned as founder & CEO of a $3M/year business. It's far more than I need to live a very comfortable life. Pretty astounding what you can do with some automation.
Outsourcing:Â I'm outsourcing more and more of my undesirable tasks, specifically to an assistant in India. In the last week, she has found me a list of apartments, saved me $100 on a flight, and rearranged my Russian study materials to facilitate faster learning. I've learned that I can accomplish a lot more if I just pass off the things I simply don't want to do. I'm still looking for things she can do for me.Â
I'm relying more and more on increasingly complex combinations of IFTTT and Google Sheets to automate things like accounting, time management, etc. While I do use RescueTime to track my on-computer time, I've set up spreadsheets to keep track of time spent at home, at the office, at CrossFit, and so on. I'm not sure what I'll do with this data, but for now it's good to start tracking it.Â
I'm returning to the "Wheel of Life" philosophy that I was taught by Phil Kristianson back in my EO days. The idea here is that you have different sections of your life (Social, Fun, Exercise, Work, etc), and you should try to maximize them all as much as possible. The best way to do this is to never partake in activities that don't fulfill at least 2 categories. If you have to watch movies (Fun/Enjoyment), do so in a foreign language to incorporate learning. If you're going to go for a run, do it with friends or family. Because of this, I'm experimenting with different ways to achieve near 100% productivity during waking hours. This might sound absolutely insane, but I'm defining productivity loosely; spending time building friendships or developing skills like Surfing is productive time. Essentially, the key here is to add a productive component (such as stretching, flossing, or other mindless activities) to guilty pleasures such as television, 9gag.com, or sunbathing.
I've begun experimenting with light, not only by creating a blackout environment to sleep in, but also by equipping my apartment with Philips Hue intelligent light bulbs and IFTTT recipes to gradually dim and alter the colors of lights for sleeping and waking. So far, the results haven't been profound, but I'm hoping to see some long term effects not unlike those I saw with flux for my Mac.Â
I'm beginning to work on an interesting project for a "Life Dashboard" type thing where I can track my goals, current levels of satisfaction with various aspects of life, and other interesting pieces of information I want to be constantly in my face. The first prototype will be whiteboards with some permanent markings on them, but I'm considering building some type of web interface to aggregate such content.
Standing Desk is still going strong, though I am not using it nearly as much as I should be. I'm wishing it were socially acceptable to have standing desks in cafĂŠ's. That would be great
Needless to say, I'm still very actively superlearning, and in fact, I now have 10,000 students who are learning to do the same. I've fallen behind on my nightly reading ritual since business school - it seems that I broke the habit by being overwhelmed with social events during that time. I'm slowly working on getting back into it, and may use some kind of app like Lift to modify habits.
My language study experiments have NOT been tremendously successful, not because of flawed methodologies, but because I've found it difficult to practice what I preach. It's far more comfortable to spend my language learning time in Anki building up vocabulary than it is to talk to native speakers or take grammar lessons on iTalki. I've been a bit lazy with my Russian studies, and haven't made mind-blowing progress with Hebrew reading and writing (though both are quite above adequate at this point). I attribute the latter to Pareto's law, as I'm already beyond functional fluency in Hebrew. Russian, however, has thrown me for a loop, and I need to spend some time developing more innovative ways to learn and become comfortable with the падоМи
There's only so much I will write about here, as it's deeply personal. However, I am only a bit ashamed to admit that I have put together a spreadsheet of all the people with whom I wish to be in touch with. Without giving too much away, I am developing a sort of unique methodology for actively maintaining relationships that matter to me across borders and time zones - again with some element of Google Sheets and perhaps some IFTTT interplay.
I'm working on developing more sophisticated ways of finding interesting people I want in my life. This was one of the most impactful things I took away from Ryan Allis' recent slides, specifically his wisdom on the power of a good partner in one's life. I haven't gone too far with this yet, but I intend to find a hack - even if it's changing where I look in some sort of conscientious way.Â
So, that's the majority of the "high-level" hacks right now. I could go into detail about how I've programmed keyboard shortcuts to dim all the lights to bluish-purple hues in my house, open the movie player on my Mac, and turn on Airplay Streaming all at once, but that's not really big picture stuff. Instead, the overall picture here is to eek-out any big wins that can be made in the areas of my life that matter most; health, social life, work and productivity, and so on.Â
My goals right now are to master habit creation, minimize "unproductive" time to nearly 0, and develop a more regimented approach to everything I need to get done. I'm still quite productive, but the amount of time I waste every day is truly astounding.Â
I hope this post has served to pique a bit of curiosity and bring your attention to some of the tools I'm using to hack my own life; I wrote it as much for myself as for others, but I would love to hear your feedback on any of these topics.Â