Lifehack? More like Lie-hack

Shirley Lee 🍟
Jul 29, 2017 · 5 min read

The life of high-school Shirley was changed when she stumbled upon 9gag, a funny content site; a month later, while she was ferociously scrolling through useless posts and memes, she read a life-hack masterpost. Her life, though having changed one, was now changed once more. Post-lifehack Shirley would know, forever, that a plastic bottle can be used to separate an egg yolk from egg whites, and a CD-holder can be used as a bagel box. These would be the two things she knows but never actually tries in real life. Because in Hong Kong, aka, the real world, no one would ever eat bread with a hole in the middle.


When every tip and tricks for housework is shared, people all around the world anticipated more life-hacks. How can anyone resist the perfect idea that life can be made simpler? But all the lifehacks are listed and shared. People came up with a term to spice up their mundane life: productivity hacks.

College Shirley loved this idea. She worked very slowly. Her time management skills could be compared to an average city dweller’s bird catching skills: no one could catch birds. If only I can squeeze more work into every second of my life! I can spend a whole month working on my papers, and ace every exam! Victory, and success!

College Shirley ended up lying on the sofa reading through the productivity hacks instead of studying. While deadline fighting on a paper, she wondered, damn, what lifehacks can I use to skip sleeping?

She worked on an essay overnight on an empty stomach. Not eating for 16 hours then starting the day with food will reset the body clock, she recited from a lifehack site. She slept at 4am, then woke up at 6am. She cooked some eggs and ate them.

Holy shit! I’m wide awake! exclaimed Shirley after eating the eggs.

At 12nn the paper was finished and Shirley crashed on her bed. She was late for the 2pm class that day.

College Shirley couldn’t remember a time when she was 100% herself; she was also consuming content, either in the form of lectures or social media clickbaits. Other times she was tapping out letters for her essay while wanting to bang all the computers in sight. She wanted to do literally everything from conquering the world to sleeping forever, and she wanted to do them all at once. But she couldn’t because she was a mess.


I am graduating uni and in the last few week I have been “job-seeking” Shirley. All the cover letters I drafted are so bland that I bored myself. After watching this video, I decided to give coffee naps one more shot (my last time ended with me trying to sleep but can’t while working on a 35-page essay). I downed a can of cold, black coffee then slept for 20 minutes.

Oh dear, this is bad. I need to sleep 5 minutes more, I said to myself.

How about you stop being a limp lettuce, another voice said. So I woke up.

And then the caffeine hit the brain. As if there is a system reboot button, I felt like I am in complete control of my emotions and thoughts; I wrote a cover letter overflowing with passion. Alone in my dorm room, I put my hands up in the air and did a spin. I need to talk to everyone in the world. Finally, a life hack that works! Full control of the body and mind is finally within grasp!

I tried the coffee nap two more times. I ended sleeping two hours every time and woke up groggy. The naps are not working anymore.


Life hacks work like this: Trying this method A will instantly make your life better.

Sound awfully like an advertisement. And what do most ads do? They imply that your life is bad and you need their product to change it.

Looking at sunlight for 10 minutes will promote wakefulness, I said to myself at 8am to avoid dozing off on the bus, knowing that I have been tired of life.

Pretend to smile and hold the superwoman position in the toilet stall and you will be more confident, I said to myself before an interview, knowing that I don’t talk well and I am unqualified for the job.

Meditate every day for 5 minutes to gain clear your head, I said while trying to schedule even more free time in a timetable with only one task on it. There are indeed something I wanted to do, but starting seems terrifying. Better meditate some more.

If you are only look through life hacks, you are, on a level, lying to yourself.


Lifehacks work sometimes. But mostly we do them to lie to ourselves. That life’s hardest problems have simple solutions. That we can take a magic shortcut to big success.

Life hacks can’t help you to be more productive. You are only productive only if you start producing. Only if you start doing.

If lifehacks worked for everyone, no one would have had problems in life.

Even if all the lifehacks worked on you, and you are ten times more productive than everyone else, it still doesn’t mean that you are living life to its fullest. Consider these two people:

  • Person A is a well-respected CEO who prides himself on not being late to work and not taking a single sick leave his entire life. If he is not working hard he beat himself up to doing it. He assesses his emotion and situation all the time to maintain control, as if he was an observer of a person who is living his life.
  • Person B has a day job. He also has some side projects that he hopes he will finish one day, but if he is tired after work, he loosens up completely. He listens to music in his room alone while dancing to it, tussling his fingers in his hair and feeling every single vibration in the beat.

Who is living life to its fullest? Person A might have high productivity and achieved a lot, but Person B has his fair share of fun.

Who are we to judge? Our struggle over whether we should achieve things or enjoy the breeze will never end.

(87/100)


Here, a cool gif showing how you can tell me that I am not yelling into an endless void and instead, real human beings are reading stuff I spent an hour writing (to procrastinate on something else):

Follow me to read my daily musings :

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

Shirley Lee 🍟

Written by

unnecessarily enthusiastic over trivial things.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

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