No Hacks For The Hard Work

There are no hacks for the hard work.

You can make easy work faster with a shortcut hack. You can make complex work less complex by streamlining it via a hack.

None of those are the hard work of your job. The hard work is creative, or it’s interpersonal, or it’s unchangeably time consuming. And none of those things can be hacked – you can’t hack your way to better choral compositions, and you can’t hack your way into building better relationships with your students, and you can’t hack your way to making a ten-hour day last only six hours.

What you can do is get good at it. By repetition and self-reflection, you can build skills around creativity, connection, stamina, or whatever the hard work is for you. Getting good isn’t a hack, it’s a practice.

I love a good life hack, but too much obsession with these hacks can turn attention away from the really important process of actually getting good at your work.