Clever or Lazy?

Guy talking to a dog groomer; 'You know who did your job in my day? A hose.'

A long time ago I used to work on a construction crew. Being one of the younger guys on the crew I got a lot of the grunt work. We were building an apartment building and putting in the second floor units. I was running mud (drywall compound) in big 10 gallon buckets up the stairs. By the middle of my third trip up those stairs I was telling myself there has to be a better way to do this. There was.

I rigged a pulley system where I could load up four buckets at a time and pull them up from the ground floor. One of the old timers saw what I was doing and gave me a disapproving look.

'What's wrong?' I asked.

'When did you get so lazy?' asked the guy.

'You call it lazy,' I said. 'I call it clever.'

He grunted unhappily and left.

These days when we find ways to do things 'better' we call it life hacking. People looking for the best solution to a problem. I hadn't thought about it very much until I began seeing more and more life hacking articles of solutions in search of a problem.

The trend of life hacking has developed an offshoot of people who believe they can find a solution so perfect that accomplishing their goal will require virtually no effort at all.

I'm clever, but not so clever that I believe I'm the only one that's seen this (I wish I was that clever) and found a great article, Stop Hacking Your Life.

It's a great read.