
Confessions of a recovering lifehacker - adambyrtek
http://johnpavlus.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/confessions-of-a-recovering-lifehacker/
======
josefonseca
> Maybe all the time I spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping
> me from, well, doing things.

Eureka!

People are complicating their lives just to decomplicate later. It's a vicious
cycle designed to keep the market flowing. Needs are created in real time, we
don't even know why we need certain things any more. We live under the anxiety
created by the excess of excess.

With 99% of the so called "life hacks", we're just trying to eliminate a
problem that we created by another "life hack". Oh a nice trick to keep the
iPhone doing X? Cool! Why did I need X in the first place again??? I don't
remember. And the iPhone...why did I buy it? I just play a silly game and use
the contacts list most of the time.

There is a:

99% chance you don't need your email available 24x7

99% chance you don't need a new car

99% chance you don't need a cell phone turned on 24x7

99% chance that 99% of the shit ton of information you gather daily will be
thrown out of your brain in just a few weeks

99% chance you don't need a stupid GPS guiding what you do, where you drive

99.99% chance you don't really need a new iPad, iThis, iThat, HTC that,
whatever

99% chance you don't need the extra U$ 1000 on your sallary

99% chance you didn't need to be tweeting or checking your email while there
was a nice person sitting next to you while you waited at the airport

99% chance you don't need to be all you can be better richer faster more

This is why the world is turning into a bunch of control freaky, unhappy,
lonely, greedy and unhealthy bunch of individuals.

I discovered this one day. I said fuck it and went for a walk at the park.
Since then, I've done the same thing daily and I don't miss the other 1567
things I used to do on the Internet instead of having a silly walk at the
park.

~~~
sliverstorm
I kind of wish "life hacks" as we know them today could be replaced with a
simple set of tricks, such as "melt a pen cap to remove weird screws" or
"blanch onions to make peeling them easier". A blending of classic tricks
(like the onions) and modern tricks (pen cap).

 _99% chance you don't need a cell phone turned on 24x7_

Agreed, my phone automatically powers off at 11PM and on at 7:30AM, and I
barely ever notice. I do notice the improved battery life though.

 _99% chance you don't need a stupid GPS guiding what you do, where you drive_

While true, the cost of a GPS unit is so low it is easy to throw one in the
glove box for that 1% when you do need it.

~~~
javajosh
I realize this question is _entirely_ contrary to the OP's point, but I really
must know: how do you get your phone to automatically turn off and on? It must
be a hardware feature, and not an app, right?

~~~
sliverstorm
Heh, this is a $20 dumbphone from AT&T (Huawei U2800A). It is probably a
hardware feature, PC RTC wakeup style. Not sure if the various appphones can
wake up at a time, though there ought to be apps or settings to shut down at a
time.

------
gwern
One of the interesting things about lifehacking is that it seems to be one of
those things where "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" - kind of like
the kid who takes Philosophy 101, learns a little bit about syllogisms and
formal deductive fallacies like ad hominems, and goes around being obnoxious
while never realizing that actually, most deductive fallacies are valid
inductive arguments. (If a Nobel physicist claims something about a random
point in quantum mechanics, he _really is_ more likely to be correct than a
guy sitting next to you on the bus, even though if you wrote this down on a
syllogism test, this would be flagged as an 'argument from authority'.) We
might call this "the valley of bad rationality"
<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Valley_of_bad_rationality>

In the case of lifehacking, it's more a case of "the valley of bad economics":
of knowing just enough economics to understand that saving time is valuable
and worth paying for upfront, but not being good enough to take the analysis
any further and consider things like 1) how much time you are actually saving
on net, 2) how long you are likely to be using any system and receiving the
gains you paid for, 3) and whether you might not be overestimating both
figures.

Frequently, you find that even large apparent gains are not actually justified
solely on the basis of saving time because of the uncertainty and discounting
of future gains you need to do.

To give some examples I recently worked through some numbers on various self-
experiments I've done:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/cih/value_of_information_8_examples/>

The striking thing is that even the most dramatic self-experiments like using
melatonin to improve my sleep did not justify very time-consuming (and more
reliable) experiments, and the most efficient thing to do would just take
melatonin on the strength of my background information and subjective
impressions of efficacy.

~~~
jonmb
In regards to your first paragraph: I understand your sentiments, but speaking
of "argument from authority" in specific...

I always took this to mean that we can't believe something _just because_ an
expert says it. In other words, an expert should be more correct than the guy
on the bus, but an argument needs to stand on its own -- it doesn't really
matter who says it.

So you wouldn't be flagged for saying the Nobel physicist is more likely to be
correct. You _would_ be flagged if you said he is correct _because_ he's a
Nobel physicist.

Is my understanding correct? Disclaimer: I've never taken any Philosophy
class. :)

~~~
gwern
I don't know what you mean by 'just because'. If a Nobel physicist tells me
that in 24 dimensions, it's true that you can't frobnicate the fooar while
preserving bariconicity, I'm going to believe that indeed, you can't so
frobnicate things 'just because' he told me that.

~~~
jonmb
So would I. But why? Because I don't know anything about quantum physics, and
he's supposed to have a good grasp of the truth of the subject, so I would
just take his word for it (a small act of faith). But _his word_ is not what
makes it true or false.

If the most celebrated nutritionist told me that eating nothing but baked
beans was the healthiest diet in the world, I wouldn't believe him 'just
because' he's an expert. I know enough about the subject of nutrition to
consider his Baked Beans idea demented. So, I would ask him to show some sort
of evidence.

P.S. I'll be reading more of your _Value of Information: 8 examples_ article.
Very interesting!

------
kirse
There's a reason why Steven Covey's "7 Habits" is such a popular book, and
it's because it delivers a fantastic framework - not a list of 1000 self-help
tips - for building a life organized around your principles.

He spends a whole chapter talking about the tyranny of the "urgent" and how we
often allow it to crowd out the "important"... and how essential it is to
plan/balance the necessity of one vs. the desires of the other.

I think I realized this intuitively when I was about 20 or so, but when you
have your principles defined and commit to them daily, everything else flows
from there... When you have a driving purpose in life, everything from
confidence to leadership to relational skills to technical skills and even
your desire for being physically in-shape all develop and naturally flow out
from your overarching desire to meet that purpose. Covey calls it "true
north", and it's a great metaphor -- when you know "true north", all paths
that don't bring you in that direction immediately and quickly become
irrelevant to your life.

Even better, you rarely need self-help books along the way, simply because
life will teach you all the unique lessons and tricks you need to learn as you
strive intentionally towards that mission.

With that said, once you've decided that you're doing things that matter, hack
away, because time is still the currency of life.

~~~
DavidAdams
On the other hand, one of Covey's habits is "sharpen the saw." Which is just
another metaphor for Lifehacking. If you take a few minutes to optimize your
tool, your work will be easier. On the other hand, if you spend your day
sharpening the saw, at some point it's not going to get usably sharper, and
you're just wasting time. You've got to find a way to strike the balance.

~~~
kirse
Oh I'm in full agreement with you... I was just trying to elucidate the point
that I felt like John needed to drive home - the importance of asking the big
questions first, because only then will we have a direction in life that makes
it easy to discard all the distractions... otherwise we're merely placing
bandaids over lesions rather than curing the disease.

------
snowwrestler
I'm not in control of my email inbox; the thing fills up faster than I can
deal with it. From a GTD lifehacking perspective this is bad. From a normal
human perspective this is bad; I don't like to feel that I am perpetually
disappointing people by not responding to them quickly.

I could put a lot of time and effort into getting it under control and keeping
it under control. In fact I've tried a few times, although it always reverted
back to out of control as soon as I got busy again.

Re-read that last sentence--I let it go "as soon as I got busy again." It took
me a while but I realized that this is actually my own healthy attitude about
email...it's not what keeps me busy. My real work is what keeps me busy, or my
family, or my friends. Email is what I fit in around the real stuff I do.

I've accepted that email management means simply choosing who to disappoint on
a daily and sometimes hourly basis. In a way it's flattering that all these
people want my attention and efforts. But it's not sustainable. So I've
consciously tried to shift my mental energy from trying to "fix" my email, to
simply trying to make the best decisions about who to disappoint as I go along
with my real work.

~~~
bradwestness
Yeah, the most important part of managing your e-mail is training people not
to e-mail you 10 times a day expecting prompt responses, especially for things
that are not really urgent.

The prevalence of cell phones and always-available internet has led a lot of
people to believe that you need to always take every phone call, always
respond to every text and e-mail.

I've developed a habit of waiting at least a day or two before responding to
e-mails and phone calls. Let the message bounce around in your brain for a few
days and actually make a well reasoned response.

You'd be amazed how often problems will resolve themselves, and training
people not to expect you to respond immediately 24/7 will gradually reduce the
amount of stuff you get sent.

~~~
flogic
It's very important to train people. Otherwise, they get the idea that their
entitled to an instant response.

------
itg
Wow I could have written this same exact blog post. "Maybe all the time I
spend looking for better ways to do things is keeping me from, well, doing
things." This realization also hit me not too long ago. Everything had to be
setup just right, I had to know every little detail, and it had to be done
efficiently. However, I realized I was getting absolutely nothing done. I
learned much more and got more things done by just jumping into whatever I
needed to accomplish.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good" - Voltaire

------
ZanderEarth32
I've recently noticed that less planning and 'life hacking' in certain areas
of my life have opened doors to more progress. For example, my desk at home. I
used to have to have it sparse and minimal. Nothing could be on it but my
keyboard, mouse, monitor and laptop. So, I'd spend time every day or week
cleaning it off, making sure nothing ever got it on it, actually getting
distracted from what I was working on for fear of something getting on my
desk.

Around the first of the year I read a post about 'minimal porn' and 'desk
porn' and it made me feel really petty and stupid. So, I decided to let my
desk 'live and let live'. Whatever ended up on my desk (within reason) could
stay. After a week or so, I was over the minimal desk thing. It never even
crosses my mind now. My desk is for work and concentration, not staging of
photos.

~~~
zecho
It's about finding a balance. I can't stand a cluttered desk, but I'm a
cluttered person, generally. I take care of it by swiping everything off my
desk once every other week and into the bin. If I can't immediately think of a
reason to save something from the carnage, it's probably not important at all
anymore.

I've yet to be burned by this and I take the approach to my closets at home,
too. While spring cleaning, if I can't remember seeing some item in the last
year, it goes to goodwill. My wife used to freak out about sentimental things,
but she's come around. They're just things. If they're really that
sentimental, put them someplace you can admire them every day.

------
jacquesm
You can solve this in a simple way: Spend a fixed percentage of your time on
fixing your tools, the rest on the actual work. The fixed portion should not
exceed 20% or so.

Like that you stay productive and you incrementally improve your work
environment.

Obsessing over your work environment is just as counterproductive as obsessing
over the work itself. A healthy balance is the main ingredient to increasing
productivity in the longer term.

~~~
antoko
But how long do you spend setting up the time-tracking process that ensures
you don't exceed you 20% time frame in a given day/week/month/year? And don't
you also have to track that time as tool-time? How do you even do that without
your time-tracking system up and running?!

Facetious, i know - but this is a confessional, the OP is basically saying he
isn't capable of separating his time out like that - he would get drawn into
the optimization process - like an addiction and blow past he's 20% allotment.

If a person is able to maintain the don't go over 20% of your time on
optimization then by definition they aren't dealing with the same issue as the
OP.

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
And for that matter, doesn't 1/5 of your time spent like this sound like you
went down the rabbit-hole already?

~~~
stcredzero
That depends on what your expected payoff is.

------
mattiask
The key is to combine "minimalistic living" with life hacks. Reduce your life
down to the essentials, then use life hacks to go even further.

For example: you probably won't get away without paying your bills so a "life
hack" that automates that process will take another load of your shoulders.'

On the other hand, a "life hack" for storing "all your stuff" might not be as
good as simply "get rid of all your crap"

Also good point about life design, there's not much point in "saving x
minutes" or earning "x dollars" if you don't do anything useful and worthwhile
with it

All in all the most important thing is to have a process, call it kaizen,
constant improvement, or whatever. Try different things, measure / see what
works, learn from the mistakes, rinse - repeat

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
The rabbit hole is in that automation, though.

~~~
mattiask
I find that once you realize there's a problem that can be solved it's often
the case that a solution is available if you look for it. My bank for instance
makes it easy to set up automatic payment of most of my bills. Yet if I never
realize that this is an annoyance that could be solved I wouldn't have gone
looking for that "feature".

------
hef19898
It always puzzles me to read my own impression and un-articulated feelings
written down by someone else way better than I'm at thinking about them less
writing them down!

And yet another post for my list of HN post that had the biggest impact.
Thumbs up!

~~~
adambyrtek
Is the list public or do you prefer to keep it to yourself?

~~~
hef19898
There was a ask HN thread not long ago.

The list, totally unrated, is:

There is no speed limit

This one

Most of pg's non-tech essays (since I don't understand the technical ones)

The SpaceX couverage (being in Aerospace, I'd like to hide in shame compared
to what sapceX did, but a bright example of what actually is possible)

Being deaf (it open my mind to something I never really thought about)

Among others, of course!

------
rmATinnovafy
I've stopped watching televisionm listening to radio, movies, or even browsing
the internet. In fact, I disconnected the cable service, and told my internet
provider to take a hike.

My life? A hundred times better. I can now focus. I play with my daughter for
at least an hour every day. I've lost more than a hundred pounds. I now run
marathons. I program like a madman. And I was able to begin doing my own
startup (which is about to launch my first MVP).

Have I missed anything? No.I'd say I'm now living, instead of just being here.

Try it out. It works.

 _Edited to fix formatting. Sorry for the annoying one line paragraphs._

~~~
gcr
If you used Internet access to write this post, where do you draw the line?

~~~
rmATinnovafy
Great question. I limit my use of the internet for work. That includes
networking with other people on hacker news. I actualy sit outside my home
office to get some open WIFI signal in order to connect.

This has greatly allowed me to focus. Because I can only connect to the
Internet when I have to. It also allows me to really plan my day ahead. I can
say "from 10am to 11am I will surf Hacker News for ideas, people, and new data
points." Instead of just browsing relentelssly all day. It also allows me to
label things as they appear in terms of importance.

I'm actually writing a short article about it. Will release it soon. Keep
posted.

------
Proleps
When you are a programmer you always want to improve things. I have little
python scripts for common tasks everywhere.

One of the things I have never tried to improve is my email. I check my
personal email once a day, and almost never in the weekends. When I see a long
email that takes a long time to make a point, I stop reading and go to the
next. Some people don't really like it when I do this, but it keeps me sane.

The one time I tried to check my email more often and respond more often the
amount of email I got exploded and I decided to stop.

Yesterday I had a discussion with someone about answering email. In which I
said "Ten years ago a lot of people didn't even have an email address or a
mobile phone and a lot of people didn't want one. Everything went fine without
it". Sometimes I make myself feel old :P.

I sometimes think the world would be a better place without email and mobile
phones, life would be a lot more relaxed. The only way to deal with them is to
not use them as much as possible.

------
calinet6
As with most things, there's a balance to it.

Should you spend 40 hours customizing your e-mail solution? Probably not.

Should you spend 1 hour and get it to an efficient state? Why the hell not.
It'll save you some time later on.

This article is an overcorrection to a problem which stemmed from a lack of
balance. The thing itself is not bad (engineering systems for your life), the
imbalance of over-engineering was bad.

So yes, lifehacking to the extreme such that you spend more time working on
systems than using those systems is probably a bad thing. But living your life
as though no system could aid it is just as bad.

If you read GTD with the idea that David was a very eastern-religion
influenced guy and studied martial arts and meditation, you sort of get this
intuitively. There's a limit; a zen about it.

Don't over-engineer your life. Balance it using the tools available to you, so
your tools just work and you don't have to think about the tools anymore. If
you're spending too much time on the tools, you're doing it wrong.

------
JVIDEL
The ultimate lifehacking is going from rag to riches by selling a completely
useless "item" that some people find extremely valuable, thus further
inflating it's perceived value.

You probably don't need much to do it, and the revenues from the sale will
allow you to go around most of the obstacles that the vast majority of people
have to go through in this life.

------
sparknlaunch12
Wow! The life hacker recovery points were great.

1\. Less lifehacking, more life-designing

2\. The best app/tool/gadget/hack for the job is the one you have with you.

3\. The least possible (practical) amount of organization is best.

4\. You are very important, but only to certain people. Make sure you identify
them correctly.

If you only try implement one of these you got to moving in the right
direction.

------
damian2000
"Syncing all your crap with all your other crap"

What an awesome quote ;-)

------
runjake
As with most trends, the thought starts off honest and well-intentioned and
then grows into a sort of anti-self. See also: minimalism, GTD, moleskines.

In many ways, I think the key is not to sell your heart into something too
quickly or even at all. Also, let other people be the early adopters --
examine their successes and failures.

Be ruthless about the tools you use and the methods you use. If they're too
cumbersome, ditch them.

I often wonder if the frustration with this encumbrance is whether its because
for a lot of things, digital tools aren't the best choice. Or at least some
digital paradigms aren't, such as Omnifocus and Evernote vs. a rough paper
analog such as Notational Velocity.

------
dharmach
We can start living simpler life with fewer needs and be content and happy
until some more aggressive, more ambitious people come and destroy us, as
happened to some in history.

------
stcredzero
I'll try to make a law here: For every way you can use X to improve your life,
there's 100 ways X will just waste your time or worse.

Corollary: Over half of the audience for self-help books need one to stop
buying self help books.

So, lifehacking is just self help packaged in tweet-sized and blog-post sized
attention span chunks?

------
jonmb
Steve Pavlina wrote a related article titled _Self Help Junkies_ :
<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/04/self-help-junkies/>

------
j45
Love this post -- breaks down the analysis paralysis that can settle in when
confusing activity with results.

Constantly being systems only and not doing the work itself will make any
system, no matter how optimized, ineffective.

------
sonnyhe2002
Is lifehacking a trend? I remember in the good old days hacking was just
hacking or social engineering. Now these 'hipster hackers' are giving it names
like lifehacker, brogramming, etc. I'm getting old.

------
pfeyz
Here's the David Foster Wallace speech he recommends
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5THXa_H_N8> .

------
jongraehl
Yes, but presumably there exist people who are both getting things done and
choosing the right things to do.

Also, I'd reconsider the fuchsia emphasis.

------
ulisesrmzroche
This really made my morning. I can finally stop re-reading GTD!

------
crusso
For the tl;dr -- Learn to discern the forest from the trees.

------
jpegleg
Thanks for sharing, it was a good read.

------
pitarus
Finally the why and not the how

------
thibaut_barrere
Balance is everything.

------
jrajav
This article definitely makes some great insights, but it also rubs me wrong
in several ways:

1\. Mr. Pavlus asserts that all "life hacking" is a distraction. Yes, he says
"9 out of 10" and "in a lot of cases," and he backpedals in the conclusion,
but the tone of the article is really a total denouncement. I disagree with
this. Like him, I think that it is very important to have life goals,
priorities, and a focus on simplicity. However, I also think that once this is
accomplished, it is easy to sift out the "hacks" and tools that A) further
simplify your life rather than further complicate, and B) give a greater
return of time and energy than what's required to implement, learn, and
maintain them. I think that this article would have been better presented as
an analysis of why we seek out these "life hacks" (If you're looking for them,
at least you're not THAT far from the right mindset!), and a suggestion for
improving the way we view and implement them.

It is certainly easy to get caught up in the excitement of improving your
tools and organization, especially the electronic ones. Everything is just so
smooth and colorful! But that doesn't mean it's always purely a distraction.
It might be a waste of my time to spend an hour trying to tweak my GMail to
work with some unholy union of Quicksilver and Applescript (It wasn't, I use
that hotkey every day), but I don't think it's a waste to spend ten minutes
learning GMail keyboard shortcuts I will use for a long time to come.

Here's how I resolve the gap. When I see something that I think will be useful
for me, I stop right there and send it to my inbox to research later. Treating
even the initial research as another task gives me time to let it simmer and
unconsciously decide if I really need it, and more importantly, when it comes
time to return to that research, I will be more impartial about evaluating
that research against my other priorities. If I do decide to do it, I will be
much more likely to focus on just that one new hack, and not go on a
lifehacking spree.

By the way, my "inbox," and my entire GTD system, is just a set of tags and
filters in my GMail. After having the idea, it took me about an hour to think
through and implement, and it has improved my entire life. I consider it and
GTD a great example of the good kind of lifehacking -- both A) and B) are
satisfied.

2\. This is a less important point - more of a technicality - but being
someone who thinks everyone should at least know about GTD, I want to point
out that a large part of the book is devoted to almost exactly this topic:
Evaluating your life priorities at every level, and learning how to apply
those to what you're doing at any given moment. It's the less sexy part of the
system, but arguably the more important.

I've only read the book once myself, and I don't own it anymore. I gave it
away to someone else, the proper fate of all good books. However, what I got
from the book has stayed with me, and probably will for my whole life. I don't
spend undue time and energy revisiting GTD and thinking about how much I can
possibly optimize it, but I value it enormously, and my success with it
prompts me to be at least somewhat open to new hacks if they seem equally
valuable, and to advise others to do the same.

3\. More of a case in point of the above: Mr. Pavlus' Game Genie example was
apt, and he was right, it certainly didn't make the games any newer. But does
that mean it was a waste of time? If changing the rules of the game slightly
allows you to enjoy something you love in a fresh way, is that a distraction
or is that life? Personally, I love video games, and I do something very
similar. I do challenge runs and especially speedruns of games I love, old and
new, so that I can continue to genuinely enjoy them well beyond the initial
experience. That's what I think the best hacks are really about: Squeezing the
most you can not out of your system, but out of life.

------
michaelochurch
I've come to the conclusion that the hardest part of "lifehacking" is what I
might call the Principle of Moderate Change.

Essentially, small changes can't be pushed by will alone, because they're easy
to make but hard to maintain. They just don't make enough of a difference. If
you try to get up 5 minutes earlier every morning, you're not going to become
a "morning person". You're going to start making exceptions because there just
isn't a real difference between waking up at 7:25 vs. 7:30. Likewise, people
who try to "cut back" on cigarettes fail. After a month, they're back to their
old rate. Small changes get wiped out if there isn't some long-term, glacial
force (not conscious will) pushing them.

From a static perspective, you need enough magnitude in the change to escape
the "drainage region" of whatever local optimum you're at, and move into
another region. If we take the more featured _dynamic_ perspective wherein
those optima might be moving, we see that gradual life changes are happening
all the time, but that will power alone is not causing them: the glacial shift
in these local optima is what does this.

On the other hand, extreme changes are usually rejected, both by the
individual (who never gains confidence in his ability to see the change
through) and by people that one intends to influence. The only time people
accept these kinds of changes is when there's a sense either of desperation or
extreme opportunity, and those are rare circumstances.

So it seems that the most effective way to consciously manage one's life is to
make meaningful changes of middling size-- not so small that they get rubbed
out by the long-term glacial changes, but not so large that it's impossible to
really believe that they will work. I think this is appropriate to self-
management and leadership: getting the size of the change right.

The problem with lifehacking is that the appropriate moderate and large
changes vary from one person to another, which means that a one-size-fits-all
approach won't work. Getting up at 6:00 am will make some people a lot more
productive, and others far less. The larger the change, the more
individualized this question of appropriateness gets. So "lifehacking" usually
focuses on relatively small changes but promises a larger impact. It's not
surprising that most of these hacks fail to deliver and end up costing more
energy (through constant change and the continual depletion inflicted by
unnecessary self-control) than they add in productivity.

------
moron
If some mundane thing is taking too much of your time, then by all means
"hack" it so you can get on with your life. Otherwise you are engaging in our
old friend premature optimization.

There are a lot of different kinds of wankery in the world. There's nothing
wrong with indulging in wankery, but it's important to be honest that that's
what you're doing. To relabel it "productivity enhancement" or "lifehacking"
does not change what it is, and may mislead you into thinking you're actually
accomplishing something when you're not.

------
briholt
Perhaps the art of finding clever improvements for finding clever improvements
in life should be called "lifehacking-hacking"? Then some one will post an
article about how to more efficiently post articles about how to more
efficiently post articles about life tricks, which will be called
"lifehacking-hacking-hacking."

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lwat
If you're good at adapting to your environment you don't need to waste so much
time trying to adapt your environment to you.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-9w3dlcmyk>

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BiWinning
guys like this would be better off "hacking" their wrists.

