99% of life hacks are bullsh*t.
“Drink more water” or, right now, “dip your head in a bowl of freezing cold water.” OMG. No chance. These aren’t life hacks. These are the habits of a mediocre human who dabbles in different things but never finds success.
Real life hacks interrupt the patterns of your mind. They chuck a freaking axe in your brain and force it to bleed out on your momma’s brand new Persian rug.
I’ve collected these life hacks over the last 5 years. They’re heavily curated. And they’re seriously contrarian and will create breakthroughs.
Time to hack your life to bits with these life hacks.
There’s zero demand for “average”
AI can now do average tasks better than any human.
So AI isn’t going to replace humans, but it will replace people who think being average or doing average work is good enough. In a way, AI mass-deleted all the people with average goals and average work overnight.
Being average is boring.
The only real way to attract attention is to use your skills and talent to attempt something extraordinary. Even if you fail, the story of the experiment gets you further than settling for mediocrity.
Attempt something extraordinary.
Look stupid every day and realize it’s the best way to live
I sent an email recently about owning three Teslas (not based on politics).
People hurled abuse at me. The next day I felt incredibly stupid. What sort of douchebag emails people a photo of their three Teslas.
It was a big mistake and I will never do it again.
This is one of many examples. I look stupid a lot in public. A few months back I used an AI-generated image from another creator.
They lost their mind and said I stole it. They have millions of followers and trolled me for days. They even put my face on a coffee mug.
I felt so dumb.
But this is a life hack for success. When you look stupid you’re in the arena. You’re doing sh*t. You’re rapidly learning. And the people who matter don’t think you look stupid. They think you’re courageous.
Get comfortable with looking stupid.
Learn to hate mediocrity
The only way to escape the rat race and exit the false American Dream that doesn’t exist is to avoid being a rat.
I’ve found a bitter, angry relationship with mediocrity is the most powerful strategy. Refuse to be mediocre. Treat it like a cancer. Reject anything and everything that is mediocre. Get away from mediocre people who want to talk politics.
I went to a kid’s party the other day with my daughter. A dad walked up to me and started talking politics. I aggressively walked away without saying a word.
This is the level of discipline needed to get the F out of the rat race. If you’re not successful, then you don’t hate mediocrity enough.
Choose one of these uncommon jobs in life
A guy named Ryan McEntush once said:
“There are only two jobs in the world: building or selling. If you’re not doing one of those, you’re just an expense.”
This is an idea I think about daily. I spent years being a cog in the corporate machine because I didn’t want to build something or do real selling. So my employer did the building and selling for me and I got a mediocre career full of boring people.
When you don’t build or sell you become an expense in a corporate Excel spreadsheet. That means you’re at the mercy of layoffs, restructures, or demotions. You’re an expense, you’re not a value creator.
This is the worst part of the economy to belong to. Your goal must be to get out of the expense line item of life and get into the profit-generating column asap. You do this by selling… or building a business, community, or movement.
Don’t be a painful expense to anyone or anything in life ever again.
Go back to the older content mediums
While everyone is binging TikToks, streaming TV shows, comparing each other’s homes on Instagram, or shouting at each other about politics on Facebook, there’s a big opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Go back in time.
Listen to cassette tapes. Watch VHS tapes or DVDs. Go to a cinema that specializes in old movies and watch one. Insert a CD ROM into an old computer. Read 100 year old books in the library.
The “for you feed” is where society goes to program your mind. The way to escape the programming and avoid living a life similar to the Matrix movie or the show “Severance” is to consume content most people aren’t. That’s how you think differently.
Your creative output changes when you change your inputs.
Raw dog your walks
Picked this one up from fitness guy Dan Go.
Raw dogging a walk means you walk in nature with no phone, podcasts, headphones or music. You just let the silence of life take over your brain and help you transcend into a state of higher consciousness.
When the body gets moving so does the mind (if all inputs are shut off).
The hack that explains why people might be ignoring you
Being ghosted is the new norm. It used to make me mad.
Then I realized people ignore us when we’re not adding enough value to their lives. So next time someone ghosts you or says they’re busy, tell yourself “I’m not adding enough value to their life and that’s my opportunity.”
Add more value to get ignored less.
Hang around builders, not talkers
LevelsIO on X opened my mind to a virus.
In every industry or field there are talkers and doers. Talkers create group chats, share ideas, add you to email chains, do lukewarm introductions, stack street cred, hang around conferences and events, and talk.
They talk because they can’t build or they lack courage.
It’s especially common in the startup space. These talkers act like leeches on your time and resources. They’re hoping to catch a big break thanks to the work of a builder.
Some of the talkers I’ve met are so good at doing nothing that they can end up on boards, as angel investors in businesses, or even be given equity in a business for sharing their so-called ‘insights.’
Stay away from talkers. Spend time with builders. Builders rarely have time to talk a lot. And when they do talk, it’s a 2-way conversation.
F*ck your mood
There’s always a reason not to act.
Think of your daily life like the weather. It’s rare you get back-to-back weeks of perfect weather. You must get good taking action in winter, fall, summer, and spring. If it’s raining you still go outside and walk.
Yet most of society uses their mood to dictate what they will and won’t do. If it’s not a perfectly sunny day in Miami, then they delay until it is.
Needing to operate in a good mood is a great way to waste years of your life. In fact, acting when you’re in a bad mood is a superpower.
Bad moods help you cut through the noise. They make you more direct. Your threshold for bullsh*t is less. And you move faster with a greater sense of urgency.
Act despite your mood. Let bad moods take you to the next level.
Most people you talk to aren’t themselves
Dan Koe helped me find this life hack.
When I talk to a lot of people online I get this weird vibe. It’s like I’m not talking to them at all. Their politics, religion, or employer controls how they think and what they say.
They’re talking but it’s not their words or ideas.
It’s a Netflix TV show, a political ideology or slogan, their parents, their employer, or their childhood trauma you’re talking to. It’s why a lot of conversation feel robotic, which is odd timing because the rise of robots is going exponential.
The question is why does life often feel this way?
The reason is because people have stopped thinking for themselves. They don’t practice deep thinking. They always have someone in their ear talking to them via their headphones.
The way to be more authentic, and less like a robot, is to think deeply. It’s to have specific times when all you do is think and turn off all the inputs.
The weirdest example I can think of is a guy I worked with named Michael. We sat next to each other in the call center.
All day he would crack jokes and say random stuff. Every line he said came from a Hollywood movie or TV show. Whenever he wanted to make a point he’d whip out his iPhone and try to show me a GIF, video, or meme.
On the last day we worked together, I joked that he should audition for the next Ghostbusters movie because he memorized the lines and could say them better than the actors in the movie.
Don’t be Michael. Think deeply so you present as yourself instead of a cartoon character.
Start now and figure it out later
This is my mantra in life.
When you adopt this mindset you avoid overthinking, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and waiting for a magical time when you’re ready.
Once you’re in motion it’s easier to figure out what to do next.
Always be willing to walk away
Sunk cost fallacy screwed me in life.
I’d invest in a course, and if it sucked, I’d stay until the end because I wanted to feel like I got my money’s worth. I no longer do this.
It’s better to always be willing to walk away from bad bosses, sh*tty jobs, fake politician leaders, toxic romantic partners, and bad friends.
The trick is to walk away in silence. Don’t say anything. Don’t start drama. Just leave. Silence makes a more powerful statement than noisy farewells.
"Information without emotion doesn't create lasting impact"
( Tony Robbins)
I’ve spent 11 years in the top 1% of online education.
One thing became true, fast. Consuming information is mostly a waste of time. It’s not education, and is often entertainment disguised as learning. Unless you add the power of emotion the information you consume won’t stick.
That’s why real education is an experience.
You do it with others. You have a real goal. There are KPIs. There are deadlines. And the process is fun but full of a rollercoaster of emotions.
This is what I’ve built. People who learn from me feel something deep down from my help which is what gets them to become better versions of themselves. The cool thing is the emotion becomes a bookmark. They can keep referring back to it.
I had one student quit smoking and drinking in the month we spent writing together. He got emotional and teary-eyed when sharing this experience with our group.
That emotion took him to a new place. And from that place he became a leader in his field that he’d always wanted to become.
Look for experiences that create emotional breakthroughs, not provide more information. You can get more information any time for free from AI.
Do something poorly instead of doing nothing at all
Producing bad work is how you find out how to create extraordinary work.
There’s no skipping beginner hell. You can’t produce amazing work in a new field or format on day one – that’s impossible.
Learn to love bad work. Put it out into the world instead of doing nothing and waiting to feel ready, prepared, or skilled.
5 minutes can get you back on track
All of us have habits. And sometimes we break our habits.
James Clear taught me that when you screw up a habit it only takes 5 minutes to get it back again.
If you stop going to the gym, 5 minutes of gym gets you back in the game.
If your writing habit is dead, 5 minutes of posting a tweet helps you get back.
If you pissed off your romantic partner, 5 minutes of talking can fix it.
5 minutes is how you rebuild a broken habit. Start small.
Get around more crazy young humans
During the Apollo missions that went to space and changed humankind forever, the average age of a worker on any of the missions was 27.
27 year olds got us to the moon.
I’ve noticed recently that when extremely young people are hired to help solve a big problem, the temptation is for older people to say they’re not experienced enough, or call them naive or immature.
This is nonsense.
Young people’s minds move faster, their imagination is still intact, they often have more creativity, they have fewer rules about how the world should be, they don’t understand boundaries, and they haven’t yet had the corporate ladder beat the brilliance out of them.
I’m obsessed with young people. I have a 14 year old speaking at my mastermind soon. I have 16-21 year olds in my DMs almost every day. When I worked in banking I spent an ungodly amount of time around school groups that would visit us. And I always had at least one grad doing a project for our team.
Stop worshipping people with big egos who have years of experience.
Start worshipping young minds that haven’t been corrupted by society’s programming (yet).
The opposite of su!cide is a powerful way to change your life
Chef and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain ended his life too soon.
People have mourned his death every day for years after the event. We spend so much time focusing on those we lost too soon.
But I recently came across this life hack:
The opposite of su!cide is to rescue our life from destruction in one bold comeback that makes people go “say what-t-t-t-t-t?!”
The best example I’ve ever seen is a banker I worked with. Three years into working with him I bizarrely found out he used to be a General Manager. It seemed strange because he was working with me on minimum wage in a call center answering inbound customer service calls.
He went from $500K a year + bonuses to $35K a year and timed piss breaks.
His wife and two kids secretly thought he was a failure. His parents mocked him at Christmas dinner for the spectacular collapse of his career.
He didn’t give a flying f*ck.
In the next two years that followed, he did everything he could to reclaim his former glory. He rose back up the corporate ladder faster than anyone I’ve seen. He broke land speed records. He moved so fast he shocked former Olympic runners turned bankers (athletes often become bankers… they trade stopwatches for P&Ls).
By the time I left our team he was a General Manager again. He showed every mofo who doubted him just who he could be. It was the best payback imaginable – and many people later apologized to him for being cruel.
Maybe the opposite of su!cide is a resurrection. And we should celebrate that with screams and huge parties bigger than any celebrity’s funeral.
A way to become more resourceful than you’ve ever been
Our mind is a bastard.
It often sabotages our best intentions and replaces our dreams with lumps of coal Santa keeps in his sack for children who aren’t nice.
Nick Calamati introduced this powerful life hack:
“I hate how well asking myself ‘If I had 10x the agency I have, what would I do’ works”
This idea broke the internet.
Fortune 500 CEOs and geniuses in every field took note and reshared it. When you ask yourself what you could do if you had 10X the agency, it helps you think bigger. It reminds you that you have all the answers and can access them at any time.
Anyone with a google search engine and AI app has more resources than any other person in human history – even Einstein, Oppenheimer, or Henry Ford.
It’s so easy to forget that fact. Don’t. How would you act if you were 10x more resourceful and there were no roadblocks?
Now act that way right now.
Set a clear deadline to avoid wasting years of your life
Without a deadline there’s no reason to act today.
And all you have is today. Today is the opportunity. I spoke to someone yesterday. They said “I should have my business up and running in 5 years.” It nearly broke my balls and sucked the oxygen out of my lungs.
5 years isn’t a deadline. It’s a p*rn fantasy.
Ain’t nothing going to change in 5 years. Take a 5 year goal and turn it into 90 days. You’ll surprise the heck out of yourself and realize you can do a lot more.
The two ways to escape painful plateaus
Most of our lives are spent in a plateau.
There are two ways to escape a plateau:
Act like a mature adult and chase your obsession, stack habits, back them up with systems, and aim for mastery.
Let cheap dopamine and being busy help you escape the feeling of a plateau until you become painfully numb to it and blend in to become an invisible member of society, following the rules to nowhere.
Choose option #1. Become a mature adult instead of acting like an adult baby.
Reconnect with your childhood obsessions
As a child I loved video games and playing drums.
As an adult I thought these childhood habits were failed pursuits with no value. I no longer believe that.
Childhood obsessions help guide you later in life.
The drums taught me how to practice a lot, be disciplined, improvise, and aim to be the best in the world at something by having big dreams.
Video games taught me to start from nothing and slowly level up. They taught me there’s always someone better at the game than me. They taught me a bad guy can come out of nowhere and shoot you in the head with a desert eagle pistol.
Those childhood patterns now shape my adult goals. The reason I write online and don’t work a cubicle job anymore makes complete sense through the lens of my childhood obsessions.
What you do as an adult isn’t random. Your childhood led you there.
There are pieces to your future hiding in your childhood pursuits. Dare to revisit your childhood. Or go have a baby (like I did) and see the patterns naturally.
Your adult life was written as a child. Embrace your child-like self.
Nobody gives a sh*t
This is perhaps the greatest life hack of all.
Not only is nobody coming to save you, but also, nobody cares if you fail, get rejected, make an idiot of yourself, or don’t hit targets or deadlines.
They’re not paying attention because you’re not the main character of their life. They are. Their focus is on making sure they don’t stuff up.
The power of this life hack is it sets you free and gives you back control.
“Being an entrepreneur now has more job security than a job”
(LevelsIO)
I figured out this life hack 10 years ago for myself.
Job security and company loyalty no longer exist. Employees are lines in spreadsheets that can be erased at any moment in time for sh*ts and giggles (or to cut costs).
Entrepreneurs now have more job security because they own their distribution through email lists, social media accounts, newsletters, and Youtube channels.
Even if their business fails, they can always build something new and use the same distribution to earn an income again.
Once an employer fires your ass, though, you have nothing. No salary. No company logo to stand behind. No dignity. And a limited runway to find a new job.
AI resume scanners and automated hiring processes will guarantee you feel like crap, are treated like a number, and have to beg for a new job opportunity.
The hiring process is now robotic. It’s inhumane.
Yet entrepreneurs get the privilege to skip the job queue and create their own jobs. The cult of one-person businesses will blow up because of this change.
You can either embrace the trend or have the trend make life harder.
Use the 4000 weeks timeline to realize how short life is
Zach Pogrob reminded me of this life hack:
4000 weeks' is by far the most insane framing for how short life is.
It gets more insane when you apply Dante Mahramas’s calculation:
If you live only for the weekend your life is basically 6000 days.
The power of these two mathematical reminders is they get you to have a sense of urgency. Wasting even 12 months now feels like multiple shotgun bullets to the heart in the space of 15 seconds. It’s hard to waste time anymore. It’s impossible to have goals that start in retirement or that are lukewarm hobbies.
The problem with being human is we forget we’re on a su!cide mission. None of us are getting out alive, even if you follow Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die” philosophy.
That fact can either make you depressed or light a bonfire under your ass to get you moving and stop wasting days that turn into years.
This is why a cancer scare (like the one I had) isn’t a tragic event. Cancer is the reminder we’re going to die soon and it’s time to f*cking live.
You will die. Most of you have already used at least 2000 out of your 4000 weeks. I expect to see you make your move, like, RIGHT NOW.
