I'm Done Fucking Hacking

And choosing to meander, instead of maximize

Dear nerds¹,

I hate the word “hacks.” No, not the HBO show Hacks – that’s fucking genius.

I’m talking about life hacking, productivity hacking, whatever you want to call that desire to improve thrust upon us in news feeds (The 5 best breakfast hacks!) or YouTube shorts (Two weight resistance training hacks you didn’t know about). There’s an insight into my search and life history.

Remember when hacking meant something sweaty? Like Joan and Jack in Romancing the Stone, machete-whacking their way through dense jungle.

Now it's just another symptom of our collective optimization obsession. It’s become perfectly normal to hack fucking everything. We’re all asked to chase a productivity boost, gain an efficiency. But why?

Drumroll...so we:

• contribute to society (good little worker!)

• make more money (chase that dream!)

• buy more things (thank you, overlord Amazon for providing me with 2 day shipping of my cat food.)

• feel better about ourselves. (spoiler: it works for but a moment)

I know this cycle intimately. Every morning I dump collagen in my coffee (these aging bones need some support), and get a little hit of dopamine. Look at me, optimizing my caffeine intake! But the high never lasts. Instead, I end up spiralling about all the other things in my life I haven't "hacked" yet. My unoptimized existence. My failure to maximize every fucking minute.

So here's my proposal: What if we just... stopped? What if instead of hacking our way through life, we chose to meander? What if we focused on pleasure instead of productivity?

I want to remember that the aim of a task isn’t to shortcut it–it’s to understand why I’m actually fucking doing it. That means I need to slow down and meander.

I'm done with hacks. Sure, I might end up staring at dog walkers through my kitchen window while meandering through the dishes, but at least I'll be present for it.

The only fucking Hacks I’ll let into my life is the beautiful Jean Smart.

With love and wishes for great meanders,
Annabel
xxoo

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1. I’m using nerds in the best possible way. Nerdship: How we love a thing with such veracity that we annoy others, and then one magical day we find other people who feel the same way about the thing we love. That is nerdship.