There’s a great piece on “Life Hackers” in The New York Times Magazine (10/16/2005).
The basic premise is our jobs are “interrupt driven” and we end up having “continuous partial attention” (we’re so busy we never focus on anything). You know, you get to the end of they day and wonder what you accomplished other than get interrupted.
The article has some fascinating findings from the people that study such stuff and what the possibilities might be down the road (ah, the next version of your operating system).
The whole “Life Hacker” concept (with blog sites like Lifehacker, 43folders and others) goes back to late 2003, when technology writer Danny O’Brien asked all the productive geeks he knew what their productivity tips were.
He found some interesting ways people — very productive people — adapt to information chaos.
He gave a speech about it in 2004 at an O’Reilly conference that drew 500 info overstuffed souls. And then another and soon, we have a new cottage industry of “life hackers.”