I Call Bullsh*t on Life Hacks (Classic)

What's up everyone, this is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder's Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. For the next little while, we’re going to be republishing classic episodes of Founder’s Journal. Why? Well, first, I think they’re really good episodes, and with so many new listeners over the last few months, it’s very likely you haven’t even heard them. Second, I am spending the month of May evolving Founder’s Journal so that we can make this show as good as humanly possible for the next generation of builders and entrepreneurs. I would love your help as I dream up the future of the show, so once you’ve listened to this episode, shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com and tell me what you’d like to see from me moving forward. OK, that’s the update. Now time for the episode. In today’s classic episode, originally published on September 15, 2021, I talk about why we have become obsessed with life hacks, and why most of them are a load of crap. Let’s hop into it. 

So I felt that the best way to illustrate the load of BS that hacks are, is to start with something that's near and dear to Founder's Journal's heart, which is podcasting. There are 2 million podcasts in Apple's podcasts library. Of that 2 million, guess how many of them have only published a single episode? 26%. More than a quarter of all podcasts on planet earth have only published a single episode. 44% of podcasts have three or fewer, and 64%, more than half, have published less than 10 episodes. 

The Importance of Showing Up

What does this tell us? It tells us that showing up is a massive part of the strategy of building a podcast, or really anything for that matter, a business, a career. And no, this isn't a novel concept, but in a world where we expect immediacy and efficiency, I think there's both a lot of nuance to this idea and the need for repeating the importance of actually doing the work and not just always looking for shortcuts.

And I'll tell you why I'm confident about the need for reiterating this. When you sit at your desk, go to Google, actually do this, go to Google and type in business hacks or professional hacks and search. What you will find is about 200 million search results filled with articles that give you supposed hacks to crush it with your startup or your career. Here are a few that I'm literally looking at right now. The first result says 21 simple mindset hacks for entrepreneurs—sounds nice. Nine productivity hacks for busy, small business owners. Hey, that's me.

10 quick growth hacks to grow your business. 11 life hacks to master your professional twenties. I'm in my twenties, that sounds nice. Or 10 effective life hacks for work.

The Pressure to Succeed With Speed

And there's a reason that all of these sites are writing articles in this very specific way because the data has shown these websites and these companies that when there is a list and the word hacks follows, we click on it. Every. Single. Time. So why is that? I think it is simply because of the way that society has evolved with technology, because everything about life has gotten faster because technology has made it faster over the last 20 years. Connecting with humans has gotten faster because of social media, doing manual tasks, like sending snail mail versus email has gotten faster because of computers and the internet. And growing companies has gotten faster because of software, capital, and established playbooks for building. 

And so what I think this has done is it's created an inordinate amount of pressure on all of us to succeed with speed. We truly believe there is overnight success these days. People look to Instagram who sold after a year of existence for a billion dollars as the norm and the expectation for building a company. We need to remember that is the exception.

Anything that is worth a building is typically not hackable. Sure, you can do tweet threads like I do on Twitter as a hack or a shortcut to grow your audience faster. Sure, you can bring on a great adviser to your company who is building a business that's two steps ahead of where you want to be, so you can get there faster. But that is a hack that is not doing the work. I want to talk more about what this means after the break. 

The Best Hacks Are Unhacks

Let's get back into it. We live in the age of the hack, but hacks are small beans. These small shortcuts that we figure out in our life and our career, they don't make or break the progress you're making. They are incremental, not exponential. They are accelerants on top of a fire that you have stoked through actually doing the work. And Morgan Housel, who's a friend, he's an amazing author and an investor, you should totally check out his stuff, he put this idea of hacks perfectly. He said, someone hired a social media consultant at an old employer. During a three hour session, she walked us through hashtags, what time of day you should post on Twitter, how threading posts increases engagement, and a slew of other hacks.

She was nice, but she never mentioned the most effective social media trick. Write good stuff that people want to read. That's because writing good stuff isn't a hack. It's hard. It takes time and creativity. It can't be manufactured. It works with a near a hundred percent success rate, but it is the social media equivalent of burpees. And the best part of this story is it's not just a truth in social media. It's a truism for everything we do. The best hacks aren't a hack at all. The best hacks are typically the simplest yet most grueling, but necessary answers to get from point A to point B.

Here's a few examples that Morgan gave. What's the best marketing hack? Making a good product that people need. What's the best writing hack? Writing everyday for years. What is the best career hack? Working harder than is expected of you and being nice to people. What's the best relationship hack? Deserving to be loved. What's the best productivity hack? Realizing the consequences of being unproductive. This one really resonated with me because as I've talked about in past Founder's Journals, I've always hated procrastinating, and I've tried all of the hacks under the sun to try to get better at it and they never work. And I think it's because I just fundamentally haven't appreciated enough yet the consequences of being unproductive. What's the best hack to scale to one million users with your business? Make a product that a million people need. 

TL;DR

The best hacks are the unhacks, and the unhacks are the least sexy because they aren't shortcuts that play into our dopamine driven way of living. But they are the hacks that we should put 95% of our energy into. So the other 5% can be spent on the nice to haves, like the superficial hacks that we've become obsessed with in society. 

And so I want you to really think about this. How much of your time are you spending on the simple but hard answers? The things that aren't sexy, the things that won't get pressed, the things that won't get recognized, but over the long-term lead to the best results. And how much of your time are you spending reading articles about how can I hack productivity in my life? Or how can I hack a promotion at work? If it's more than like 5%, I want you to rethink how you're spending time on this. 

I Want to Hear From You

With that, I would love to hear from you. We have a ton of new listeners on Founder's Journal. The show has been constantly cracking the top 10 in business on Apple and Spotify. This is truly becoming a movement for growth-minded professionals and entrepreneurs. I'd love to meet many of you. Send an email to alex@morningbrew.com or DM me on Twitter @businessbarista, introduce yourself, and tell me why you came to listen to the show.

Help Us Grow the Show

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