A Long, Healthy Life
Why The Biggest Life Hack Isn’t A Hack At All
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Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve —
Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Most of us have used life hacks on one or more occasions in our lives. However, a more profound question is: why do we want to use hacks at all? Think of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the ultimate hack. We want machines to do all of the boring, mundane and repetitive tasks in the world so that we can live MORE. This article outlines why what we truly desire is a long, healthy life and a few secrets that can help us achieve that objective. In that sense, we don’t desire a short cut but what we truly desire is longevity combined with good health.
Why Hack?
As per the Merriam-Webster dictionary a Life Hack is a usually simple and clever tip or technique for accomplishing some familiar task more easily and efficiently. In Hindi, it also means ‘jugaad’. Roughly translated, a jugaad is a non-conventional, frugal innovation, often termed as “hack”.
In an article titled ‘Use Jugaad to Innovate Faster, Cheaper, Better’ in the Harvard Business Review, Jugaad is defined as a Hindi word that loosely translates as “the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources.” In crude terms, a hack is a shortcut.
Humans are an ingenious lot. I have lived in India long enough to witness thousands of clever ways of overcoming a scarcity of resources. From devising intuitive but cost effective ways of sending the first mission to Mars to MittiCool — the low cost, biodegradable refrigerator made out of clay is a great example of jugaad innovation (source:techstory.in), there are countless examples of life hacks not just in India but all across the world.
Let’s take a very simple example. Most of us have used YouTube to save time…
