I have returned to work at Salon — more on that, and what I’m up to, anon. But first, a meditation on “life hacks.”
I attended the original “Life Hacks” talk that Danny O’Brien gave at the Emerging Technology Conference in 2004 and was intrigued to learn how leading geeks organized their lives and files. (For instance, store everything in plain text files — they’ll never become obsolete or unusable, like fancier file formats.) When Merlin Mann started up his personal-productivity blog I was further hooked. There’s something irresistible about observing how software engineers apply the inhumanly rigorous logic of their calling to the mess of daily life: Sometimes it’s like a train wreck, but often the rest of us can learn something.
Life hacks now appears to be something of a minimovement, with its own Gawker Media blog called Lifehacker and an O’Reilly book apparently in the works. This page on Mann’s site offers a fine overview of the sort of “Hints from Heloise” meets “The Wisdom of Crowds” stuff we’re talking about here. Suggestions range from the violently ingenious (“Keyboard improvement — For those with a PC keyboard who don’t have perfect typing skills: rip out the ‘insert’ and ‘caps lock’ keys…”) — to the sneakily devious (“Messy house? Always keep several get well cards on the mantel….. so if unexpected guests arrive, they will think you’ve been sick and unable to clean”).
So here is my little contribution to the great parade of Life Hacks.
I have long felt that time spent matching socks is time lost forever. There is no edification, no lesson to be mastered, no pleasure to be wrung from the ordeal. Music can alleviate the boredom but not fully redeem the experience. I have achieved the zen of washing dishes, and even the tao of sorting laundry. But socks — nah.
So here is my method allowing you to Never Ever Sort Socks Again (patent pending):
(1) Throw out all your old socks (or donate them, if they’re presentable).
(2) Decide what color socks you need. The fewer colors the better. I’ve gone minimalist-retro: there’s the black socks, and there’s the white socks, and that’s it.
(3) Purchase large quantities of socks in those colors. You can get different brands/makes for each color, as long as all socks of the same color are exactly the same.
(4) Just dump the socks in your dresser drawer as is from the clean wash — don’t sort or pair them. When you need a pair, grab any two of the same color — they’re guaranteed to match!
Your socks will all be of the same vintage, and as long as you mix them up periodically and don’t let some languish at the bottom of the drawer, they will wear evenly. When they become grimy or sprout holes — go back to step (1).
This method comes to you fully tested. I have eaten my own dogfood. It works, I promise you.
But wait, you say you want color and variety and style and pizazz in your life?
I say: buy some sweaters!
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