Some life hacks principles

last updated : 15/06/2025

I collect “life hacks principles” for a few years. I just like to ocasionnally re-read them and think through these principles to improve my systems or my habbits but also to adapt my workflows (read more about that here).

Lastly, I stumbled upon this blog post and I fell in love with the approach.

Instead of reading these principles, on purpose but occasionnally, I should:

Rewrote it, for myself.
To remind myself what it means to live on purpose.

I think that these “life hacks” help build awareness. And with awareness comes the opportunity to change your perspective I collected basically hundreds of “life hacks” and I lost the sources so I just want to pay tribute to people who shared them and excuse myself for the missing sources.

This blog post is a work in progress page. I’ll update it with new life hacks when i find the time to update it; so if you like it, bookmark it for later review.

Stay a student for life

I think it might be the number one hack in your life. If you stay a student for all your life, it means :

• you know that you don’t know everything
• you’ll always learn something

Acknowledging that you don’t know everything is a virtue. Humility is a strength these days. We tend to spread our success everywhere (see below). So by accepting you don’t know, it places you in a situation of curiosity.

Even on things where you are quite good, you can learn something. Maybe understanding things differently and adapt your thought about X or Y.

If you want an illustration, think about climbing a mountain. Some people tend to think they are at the top of the mountain (on a knowledge mountain). But what does it mean actually? If you are at the top of the mountain, you can stay at the top or go down. In real life, it’s quite impossible to stay at the top because things move, improve, evolve.

So, if you think you are at the top today, tomorrow you will be a little bit lower.

By staying a student for life, you’ll never reach the top of the mountain and thus you can only climb up.

Forget credit. Do the work

We all tend to spread our success everywhere. Social media might be the biggest responsible for these tendencies and we have built an exagerated need to get recognition.

But it’s counterintuitive because it creates a need for credit and you will do things for the (bad) reason (credit for example).

by focusing on the hard things, the work, you’re dedicating yourself to it and will not be polluted by other considerations.

If i take my example, i did this website to start learning to “code” (i know i’m not a CS specialist but I learn stuff by implementing this project) and to have a place to publish my thoughts (reflexions in french ;)) but i do not know how many people read my thoughts because i did not have any tracker or analytics. So i just do the work (write & publish) for the sake & the benefit of it.

i don’t think or look for recognition as a reward.The only reward is the work i did and how i committed to.

You can view this “life hack” as a derivative of a stoic principle: differentiating between what you can change and what you can’t. What you have influence over and what you do not.

There are only two things we can control – our own thoughts and our own actions.

What you can control, as always, is how you respond. What matters is not what other people are doing or have done, but what you do (source).

Do the work and the rest will follow.

If you want something, ask for it.

This one might be the simplest “life hack”. You just need to dare to do something. Whatever it is, ask for something you want. And when you think about that, what will you lose by asking ?

What are the risks of asking? Take a no.. and so what?

As mentioned above, there are only two things you can control : your thoughts and your actions. If you know that a no can be an answer to your question, you can also control how you will feel if you get a no.

And to be strictly to the point, my guess is that you have plenty of examples around yourself, including your personal experience, where simply asking for something gave exceptional results.

Always have a timer on top & use it

this is one is a productive hack. I did use a timer for years and i enjoyed it because it forces me to be consistent and kill the procrastination.

I discovered it with the pomodoro technique. (I use Pomofocus to have some analytics of my focus sessions).

Having a timer defines a time constraint. When you start a timer, you know you will have X minutes to do something. The beauty of the timer is that it forces you to define “something”. And that’s where the magic happens. By setting a timer, you are “unconsciously” defining what you will do during the time. It helps me to do “deep work”.

It’s also a way to avoid the “Parkinson’s Law” :

*work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

If you decide to do a task without setting a time limit, you will achieve this task but maybe not the fastest way. By defining the time you will achieve the task, you force yourself to be productive and consistent.

I did experience it in my professional life. I decided, for family reasons, that I will stop working around 3 PM every Tuesday. My workload is high and it might be silly to cut the work time. Nevertheless, I find that cutting my work time by 3 hours doesn’t have a big impact because I manage to be productive in the morning. Because I know I will finish early on this day, I’m doing my tasks quickly. It’s like creating a stress moment. You know when some people say that they are working better with deadlines or when they are under stress? It’s more or less the same thing. But pay attention, you can’t cut the time indefinitely and sometimes you will have to much to do in a period of time. So it’s not a magical trick. You always have to do the work and sometimes it’s hard.

You can’t improve what you can’t measure

this one is from Peter Drucker and we can link it to Niels Bohr’s quote “if it’s not measured, it doesn’t exist”.

I do like these two quotes. First, Niels Bohr’s quote implies that we have to measure things for their existence. It may sound strange at first read but you cannot speak about something without measuring it. If I told you I’m a runner but I’m not recording how long or how much distance I did during my running session, it will be an empty affirmation. Instead, by saying that I’m a runner who runs 3x/week and covers about 30km, it helps you to figure out which type of runner I am.

Because I just wrote about pomodoro and productivity, I can also write about this example. If someone tells you that he is productive without anything else, it’s an empty statement.

My point is, you need to measure things for these things to exist in a meaningful way.

And because you measure it, you can improve it. That’s a simple rule, but it’s so powerful.