This article definitely makes some great insights, but it also rubs me wrong in several ways:

1. Mr. Pavlus asserts that all "life hacking" is a distraction. Yes, he says "9 out of 10" and "in a lot of cases," and he backpedals in the conclusion, but the tone of the article is really a total denouncement. I disagree with this. Like him, I think that it is very important to have life goals, priorities, and a focus on simplicity. However, I also think that once this is accomplished, it is easy to sift out the "hacks" and tools that A) further simplify your life rather than further complicate, and B) give a greater return of time and energy than what's required to implement, learn, and maintain them. I think that this article would have been better presented as an analysis of why we seek out these "life hacks" (If you're looking for them, at least you're not THAT far from the right mindset!), and a suggestion for improving the way we view and implement them.

It is certainly easy to get caught up in the excitement of improving your tools and organization, especially the electronic ones. Everything is just so smooth and colorful! But that doesn't mean it's always purely a distraction. It might be a waste of my time to spend an hour trying to tweak my GMail to work with some unholy union of Quicksilver and Applescript (It wasn't, I use that hotkey every day), but I don't think it's a waste to spend ten minutes learning GMail keyboard shortcuts I will use for a long time to come.

Here's how I resolve the gap. When I see something that I think will be useful for me, I stop right there and send it to my inbox to research later. Treating even the initial research as another task gives me time to let it simmer and unconsciously decide if I really need it, and more importantly, when it comes time to return to that research, I will be more impartial about evaluating that research against my other priorities. If I do decide to do it, I will be much more likely to focus on just that one new hack, and not go on a lifehacking spree.

By the way, my "inbox," and my entire GTD system, is just a set of tags and filters in my GMail. After having the idea, it took me about an hour to think through and implement, and it has improved my entire life. I consider it and GTD a great example of the good kind of lifehacking -- both A) and B) are satisfied.

2. This is a less important point - more of a technicality - but being someone who thinks everyone should at least know about GTD, I want to point out that a large part of the book is devoted to almost exactly this topic: Evaluating your life priorities at every level, and learning how to apply those to what you're doing at any given moment. It's the less sexy part of the system, but arguably the more important.

I've only read the book once myself, and I don't own it anymore. I gave it away to someone else, the proper fate of all good books. However, what I got from the book has stayed with me, and probably will for my whole life. I don't spend undue time and energy revisiting GTD and thinking about how much I can possibly optimize it, but I value it enormously, and my success with it prompts me to be at least somewhat open to new hacks if they seem equally valuable, and to advise others to do the same.

3. More of a case in point of the above: Mr. Pavlus' Game Genie example was apt, and he was right, it certainly didn't make the games any newer. But does that mean it was a waste of time? If changing the rules of the game slightly allows you to enjoy something you love in a fresh way, is that a distraction or is that life? Personally, I love video games, and I do something very similar. I do challenge runs and especially speedruns of games I love, old and new, so that I can continue to genuinely enjoy them well beyond the initial experience. That's what I think the best hacks are really about: Squeezing the most you can not out of your system, but out of life.