Monday, December 2, 2019

Work-Life Hacks—What Are Yours?

By Nathan Koslowsky, Representative

I started experimenting with life hacks a few years ago. For those of you not on this bandwagon, a life hack is “a strategy or technique adopted to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way” (Canadian Oxford Dictionary).

It probably isn’t a coincidence that my interest in realizing these kinds of efficiencies emerged at around the same time I woke up and realized that I was 40-something years old, and my joints hurt in the morning, my muscles ached if I even looked at exercise the wrong way, and I had started gaining weight in all the wrong places. I was also firmly convinced that I was not yet ready to be outpaced by my 18-year-old son.

And so I’ve adopted a handful of life hacks because I want to live smarter not harder—mostly, because I can’t live harder anymore, and I really am too young to be alpha’d by my son.

One of my first experiments was rucking—walking with a weighted backpack. This activity works the cardiovascular system as hard as jogging does, and I really do not like jogging.

Then I got into intermittent fasting, taking a break from eating every day between early evening and noon the following day. That practice triggers the body to begin burning fat without exercising more, which sounded really good to me. I lost 15 pounds in a month or two so that was cool.

Then I tried taking super cold showers for a while because I heard those can boost metabolism and the immune system. During the dark days of winter this past year, I bought a SAD lamp and tried sitting in front of it each day for a few minutes. The light from the lamp is supposed to mimic the experience of sitting in the sun and produce serotonin (a feel-happy chemical) in the brain. While I did feel happy, I also couldn’t see very well for a while after each session.

More recently, I’ve been taking turmeric to help with joint inflammation. And this week, I started drinking bulletproof coffee in the morning—a mixture of coffee, unsalted butter, and MCT (a coconut oil derivative). This strange brew is supposed to feed the brain what it needs to fire on all cylinders without having to eat breakfast. And who knows, perhaps I’m another casualty of the placebo effect, but I feel great!

I have not permanently adopted all the hacks I’ve experimented with. Cold showers were terrible, and no matter the positive benefits, I was not prepared to continue that form of voluntary torture.

Part of what gets me out there trying new things is that I don’t feel any obligation to continue any of these practices. Some I will and some I won’t, based on all kinds of metrics—convenience, cost, impact, etc.

What I like about these experiments is that it reminds me that I am not beholden to the forces of entropy. I have agency, at least to some extent—I can impact my own situation for better, or for worse.

So what does any of this have to do with your life at work? Who knows, maybe nothing at all. I suspect it does though, because there are work-life hacks too. In the office world, there are ergonomic hacks like standing desks, time-management hacks like standing meetings, productivity hacks like checking emails less frequently, removing social media notifications from phones, and calendar blocking. The list goes on. But what about in your own work life? What are the work-life hacks that you have experimented with? Which ones have been most helpful for you? Which ones failed epically?

Contest!

I want to hear from you. If you email (nathank@clac.ca) or text (204-294-3461) me your own work-life hacks on or before Valentine’s Day, you’ll be entered to win one of two $25 gift cards for your choice of either Canadian Tire or Starbucks. We’ll share some of our favourites with you after the contest is over.

Work-Life Hacks—What Are Yours?

Contest!

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