Archive for the 'Lifehacking' Category
This morning while perusing some news items I came across an interesting article on SMH about people who spend money on gadgets they can’t necessarily afford, don’t need the features and certainly don’t have the computer savvy mind to “drive” these devices.
As a gadget geek I scoffed at the implication that people are so silly that they buy devices they don’t use, but then suddenly found myself looking inwards to think about how I use my technology and just how much value it all adds to my life.
The first thing that comes to my phone. Every time I bring it out of my pocket geeks, and non-geeks alike, look in wonderment and start asking me about the features. When I tell them about the 5MP camera and GPS they are so impressed that they begin to talk about wanting one. But do I even use it?
To go through my rather extremely extensive geek collection and lay out how much I use, this might take a while but will paint a pretty accurate picture of what I need and don’t need.
Hold on to your hats.
Nokia N95
GPS - 3 times in 6 months
Camera - often more than once a day
Web - several times a day
SMS - several times a day
Calling - almost all day constantly - it’s my job
Work Blackberry (new, but this is assumptive)
E-mail - all day
Phone - all day, it will take over from my N95 for work calls
Web - several times a day
Calender / extra feature - all day
MacBook
All features - for a few hours a day or every other day
iPod 60GB
Music - every morning and afternoon after work
Video - once a week or maybe less
iPod Nano 4GB
Music - several times a week jogging, ideally, but actually not as often as I should
Video - never
Canon 350D D-Rebel
Photos (d’uh) - once a week but maybe less
PSP (Playstation Portable)
Games - less than a few times a month
Internet - Not often, but I should use more such as RSS on the bus
Other features - Never
X-Box
Haven’t touched it in years
Miscellaneous
Printer - not in years
Photo printer - even longer
Desktop PC - over a year
Television - in storage for over a year
iPod Shuffle - over a year
Palm T|X - over a year since I smashed the screen, but didn’t use enough at all
Plus god knows how much else that I can’t even think of…
How much of this stuff just belongs on eBay? Maybe just making some streamlining to my life to use fewer gadgets and use them more often? There is just too much junk here and considering most of it is portable, I have none of it with me (barring my phone of course) on a day-to-day basis.
What is your experience of buying technologies you don’t use? How many hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars worth of electo-crap do you have lying around your house?
Lifehacking is a pretty new term to me and if you don’t know what it is you should look it up. To boil it down into Mitch-speak, it basically means in geek terms making your life simpler, more efficient and getting the most from yourself.
Recently things have gotten a little insane with my life, so anything that will make it less hectic and help it gel a little easier is a welcome addition. I’m planning on doing a lot of reading and making some hacks to my lifestyle to make things a little easier.
My current life update includes, but is not limited to:
- Starting up a design business with Mik. More to come on that when we finally launch!
- Working my ass off on design, writing, reading, learning and general day to day work.
- Trying to get the most of of unruly sleep patterns, with me sleeping only around 4 hours a night of decent sleep but spending most of the day half-asleep.
- Eating shanks! (I’ll write an entry about that soon)
- Seeing Claire in Sydney and going to weddings.
- Trying to finish The Davinci Code
- Doing some major reading on Lifehacking, obviously.
- Checking out PDA’s, if anyone has advice tell me!
I really need to pull my laptop out of the router, take it away for a while and do some writing. That is the number one thing on my agenda for tomorrow, aside from riding my beautiful bike. As for now, I am going to eat some ice cream, watch some Star Trek and hopefully fall asleep. If you want to learn more about lifehacking, check out Lifehacker and 43 Folders, they are now permanant residents on my Sage list!