Thirteen Things I Hate About “Lifehacking”

Lifehacking is a “geek chic” term which gussies up the kind of “tips and tricks” articles that are more usually found in grocery store magazines. You know, the fluffy ones aimed at moms in line at the checkout counter. Ten Tricks To A Slimmer You! Thirty-Minute Vacations! 19 Tips For Calmer Kids! Improve Your Intelligence in Four Weeks!They cover a variety of topics, but they all have two things in common. First, they all have numbers, generally promising vast things in small amounts of time. And second, they all have superficial instructions. Whether they promise tips or a whole lifestyle, tips is what they offer: a few little tweaks that you may be able to add to the changes you are already making.

That’s what bugs me about this subgenre of self-help writing. It’s never about systemic change. Systemic change requires fundamental shifts in the way we approach our lives. It doesn’t fit neatly into a top ten list, and it’s not easy to describe clearly via a page of quick suggestions. It comes from finding out what someone else’s life was like (identification), what they changed (description, not prescription), and what it’s like now (hope). Lifehacking, women’s magazines, and a lot of self-help books, on the other hand, are prescriptive. They exult in at least pretending to tell people What To Do to Change Everything – not least because that kind of shiny snake-oil promise sells.

They’re selling a kind of hope, but often a false one. They claim to be able to tell people how to… achieve serenity, organize their homes, make more money, deal with abusive co-workers, et cetera… but while these ideas excite and even motivate a very wide audience, they are only helpful to a much smaller crowd.The process of change, as I understand it, tends to go something like this:

First, we become aware that change is possible. We struggle, often subconsciously, with the pros and cons, and eventually (hopefully) become willing to experience that change. We start to become aware of what we are doing that is blocking it, and that lets us participate actively, taking steps toward more change. We start to integrate those changes, and their effects, and we move into a new place in our lives, refining the steps we have taken, enjoying the changes we are experiencing, and looking toward the next change in our lives.

People can only really use lifehacking tricks in two of those stages: when we are participating actively in making a change (if it is the particular change that the author is talking about, and if the tools they suggest actually apply to our lives) and when we are refining it. Like, I always used to see lists of (for example) 25 Ways To Decrease Clutter, and I’d get all fired up and promise myself I was going to binge-clean that weekend or that I would at least buy some boxes or that I would certainly print out the list and save it to use over the next month, and then… the fire would die out, because I wasn’t ready for that shift. There was nothing deep down to fuel it. Sure, I wanted a cleaner home, but I wasn’t involved in any kind of shift toward that – or I was too early in that shift to be able to implement those tips. And, of course, at that point in my life – like anyone who is living in self-abusive clutter and chaos – I was all too eager to shame or berate myself for not being able to use those lists or figure out why I could never get around to using those lists!

Mainly, I object to lifehacking, by any name, because:

1. Lifehacking is all about control. Specifically, it’s often about trying to control the things we can’t. It targets the areas that people find unmanageable and says “Try this! No, now try THIS! No, no, THIS one will fix it!” Like, oh, are you disorganized? Have too much scheduled, took on too many commitments, and don’t know what to do with it all? Try THIS new gadget for “calendaring”! No, try this killer app for Getting Things Done! It just promotes the struggle with unmanageability, because people are very tempted by the idea that there is nothing they cannot change if they just try hard enough.

2. Lifehacking is so superficial. There’s nothing wrong with being superficial about superficial things. I don’t want a 300-page tome about how to get more mileage out of my car or clean out my email. But a ten-item list about serious psychological issues or deep-rooted emotionally-laden relationship stuff sells the reader short.

3. Lifehacking is so damn prescriptive. I’ll happily admit it: I don’t like people telling me what to do. Who does? I don’t mind advice I’ve asked for, or support from people I respect, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take, for example, a Tylenol ad telling me to eat breakfast to avoid headaches.

4. Lifehacking doesn’t know how to use I statements. I don’t want to hear what you think I should do. I want to hear what has worked for you. “Shoulding” on others is really controlling and invasive. Sure, I’ve done it; we’ve probably all done it. But, you know, it’s something to keep an eye on. When I start thinking about what other people should be doing, I know I’ve taken my eyes off my own paper and that I need to change my focus and get out of their business. Not time to go make a website or a book about how other people should be living their lives.

5. Lifehacking is amateur advice. This goes hand in hand with it not being personal experience. That cleaning article or that weight-loss advice might have been written by someone who is great at cleaning or who has lost a bunch of weight, but that doesn’t mean that they have a handle on the causes and influences or the different situations their readers might be bringing to the table. Which leads to a lot of wacky or horrifying gaffes or just plain misfires.

6. Lifehacking is bland. It’s generally either reviews of potentially useful products, which can be interesting (and which, uncoincidentally, usually do fall under personal experience rather that prescriptive advice), or basic common-sense (and often inaccurate) mainstream information about life. How many articles have you seen in women’s magazines about using bubble baths, personal time, and light reading to relax?

7. Lifehacking hijacks geek chic. Oh, maybe that’s too strong. It can’t kidnap the entire culture or its terminology. And it uses geek language because “lifehacking” started out as life tips, organizational tips, and “killer apps” being shared between coders and engineers. It was natural to them to think of it as “hacking” life. The places that use the term that way are kind of awesome; they tend more toward the “review” end of the scale, people sharing tools that have worked for them and telling others what has and hasn’t worked. It brings personal experience back into it. It’s the sites that do co-opt the term and apply it to something you’d be more likely to find in Woman’s Day magazine that bug me.

8. Lifehacking is just that: a messy hack, a patch to fix part of a problem, not a system update. If you overeat compulsively, lifehacking will not say, for example, “Here’s some information from other people who do this, and what they changed, and how it helped; here are some tools you can use to change your relationship to food and eating by addressing the underlying causes, and some ways to develop good basic ground rules for yourself.” It will say “Here is a list of fivetools that people sometimes try! One, exercise more. Two, keep a food diary. Three, stay away from fast food restaurants. Four, eat without doing anything else at the same time. Five, try a support group like weight watchers.”

9. Lifehacking pretends to be great recovery but it lacks even the boundaries to speak from its own experiences. Even articles that begin with “we” or “I” (“We all know that we should eat better,” “I have a terrible time with overscheduling,”) switch abruptly and irrevocably to “you” when they get to the list of “shoulds.” Telling someone you don’t even know what to do is terrible boundaries, and that’s often reflected in personal remarks from the writers – much of the time, these lists are written by people who admit they have not tried what they are suggesting, or for whom what they are suggesting has yet to work. They are often just sharing “common sense” or “common knowledge” suggestions – and unfortunately, what “everyone knows” is frequently wrong. Likewise, commenters rarely (sometimes, but very rarely) share that the whole list has worked for them; usually, the comments either say “Great list!”, “This misses the mark because….” or “I do item number 9 sometimes and I like it.”

10. Lifehacking promises what it cannot give. This is much like problem #8. It states a goal and implies that doing what it says will fulfill that goal, or at least help people achieve it. But with the majority of these goals, the reader has to have done a great deal of the groundwork beforehand in order to even implement the suggestions given. There’s a huge amount that goes unaddressed by lifehacking. The worst of it is that generally, if someone has the kind of life problems mentioned in lifehacking sites, and hasn’t done that groundwork, they are carrying around a lot of (misplaced and undeserved) shame and guilt about their lives – and the “you should” format of lifehacking sites only feeds into that shame. Readers often berate themselves for not following the suggestions or wonder why they can’t seem to do these simple things, which furthers the vicious cycle of shame and resistance that keeps them stuck in self-harming patterns.

11. Lifehacking brings bureaucracy into your personal life. There’s a whole area of lifehacking that straddles the line between “here’s a killer app for organizing your contacts” and “here is a killer way to be organized.” It focuses on bringing terms like “personal productivity” and “GTD” from the office into our everyday lives. What’s next, sternly worded memos? It’s the terminology of control again, but with a Dilbert-like spin.

12. Lifehacking sets the bar really low. Okay, the bar is already set really low: sometimes it seems like almost everyone could use some kind of life skills class. Like we’ve discussed before, abuse often strands people in adulthood without any idea how to have a healthy relationship with people, or food, or work, or substances, or money, or whatever it is that our parents couldn’t teach us because they lacked themselves. Lifehacking sites take that low skill level and run with it. Any given site, for example, will usually aim all of its food or exercise or money tips at people who have no skills in those areas – no matter how many years they spend giving out those tips. The same goes for magazines. Not only is there no suggestion that readers might be able to revamp their entire relationship with, for example, food, or that they might want to – there’s also no awareness of the personal issues underlying those relationships, or how they fit into the whole. It’s all “you need to stop having a sedentary life,” “you need to spend more time with your kids,” “you need to start eating breakfast,” all the time.

13. Lifehacking states the very obvious, and sometimes the freaking insane. Hitting three major lifehacking sites reveals a consistent combination of good-but-superficial-patches and hackneyed, overrepeated suggestions. My favorites: take the stairs instead of the elevator to get more exercise! Count your blessings! And on the deeply insane side: If you help people, they will get addicted to you! (Lifehacking readers might notice that lifehack.org isn’t linked there. I’m giving them a pass because they tend to have more effective how-to articles and to have good information about things like emotional health.)

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(I originally wrote this for Everything2.com. Articles there follow a practice of hyperlinking – people link words or phrases of their choice to other E2 entries so that it forms a big meandering hypertexty web. I’ve left most of the links in, here, because most of them add a snarky subtext that you can see by mousing over (holding your cursor over the link and reading the text that pops up). Some of them link to great writing themselves.)

“The FMSF supports parents who say the accusations by their adult children of childhood sexual abuse are false. These parents are typically aged 50s, 60s and 70s. Their accusers are adults who, for one reason or another, have met unbearable emotional pain and insurmountable difficulties in adult relationships – at work, socially or at home – and have sought to relieve the burden of their memories.”¹⁰

A punchy enough quote. But a brief review of the background and personalities involved with the Foundation is enough to suggest that instead, this writeup should read:

PEDOPHILES!

CIA AGENTS!

SHATTERED LIVES!

DRAMA!!!

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation was started in the United States in 1992, by parents whose children had come out about being sexually abused.

At least, that is the most neutral way to describe them. As will be explained here, they are an organization which acts to discredit survivors of child abuse, founded and staffed (as we will see here) largely by abusers.

On their website, they say their goals are:

• “to seek the reasons for the spread of FMS that is so devastating families,
• “to work for ways to prevent it,
• “to aid those who were affected by it and to bring their families into reconciliation.”

It is crucial to understand, above all, that False Memory Syndrome, or “FMS,” is not a communicable disease. It is not a valid syndrome at all, in fact. It is not recognized as such by any part of the medical community, and it does not qualify as a “syndrome” in the first place. It is a term made up by those accused of sexual abuse to shame and discredit survivors. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in short, invented this condition and then devoted itself to stopping its imaginary spread and healing its victims.

How?

“Since 1995, I have become aware of the parallel between the intimidation and silencing in the microcosm of the abusive family and in the macrocosm of a society that is ill at ease in dealing with the abuse of children. During my childhood my father protected himself from being held accountable by threatening me into silence. I believe that published documents demonstrate how some members and supporters of false memory groups publish false statements that defame and intimidate victims of proven violence and their supporters. Such altered accounts are used to discredit others in court and in the press.” – Jennifer Hoult¹⁶

Their website is heavy on their history and theories, but extremely light on their actual actions. All they will say is that “The FMS Foundation has played a role as a clearinghouse of information and as a catalyst for discussion and research about the specific claims that have formed the basis of the debate in the areas of memory, social influence and therapeutic practice.”

One of the FMSF’s main activities is the filing of amicus briefs — that is, unsolicited opinions — in court cases relating to child abuse.

Between 1995 and 1998, the FMSF filed thirteen such briefs in the United States, mainly to appellate courts and once to a Court of Appeals.

They have also attacked therapists around the country. One of their tactics seems to be to sue therapists who treat (in particular) survivors of ritual abuse, suing them for anything from trivial legal loopholes to alleged malpractice.

Primarily, however, they have acted as media boosters. From the beginning, the FMSF has pushed people to take their angry stories to the media, to talk shows as well as reporters. They have the benefit of a star-studded base of supporters: they have recruited many psychologists, lawyers, and goverment figures to their ranks. Their psychologists are often discredited, and their government connections are largely to the scarier parts of the CIA… but that just adds to the fun of it!

As Mike Stanton writes in the Columbia Journalism Review,

“A study published (in 1996) by a University of Michigan sociologist, Katherine Beckett, found a sharp shift in how four leading magazines — Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and People — treated sexual abuse. In 1991, more than 80 percent of the coverage was weighted toward stories of survivors, with recovered memory taken for granted and questionable therapy virtually ignored. By 1994, more than 80 percent of the coverage focused on false accusations, often involving supposedly false memory. Beckett credited the False Memory Syndrome Foundation with a major role in the change.”⁸

Child Rights Watch puts it in a more damning nutshell:

“A legitimising barrage of stories in the press has shaped public opinion and warmed the clime for defence attorneys. The concept of false memory serves the same purpose as Holocaust denial. It shapes opinion. Unconscionable crimes are obstructed, the accused is endowed with the status of martyr, the victim is reviled.”¹⁰

Their Research

One of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation’s main claims is that they simply promote the most recent scientific findings on memory. This is made easier for them by their Scientific Advisory Board, which has such stellar figures as… well, actually, everyone discussed below except the Loftus couple.

Oddly enough, the scientific research produced by these people, and still promoted by the FMSF, has been thoroughly discredited.

For example, Board member Elizabeth Loftus is possibly the most vocal, visible, and quoted member of their organization. She produced the ground-breaking study entitled “Lost In the Mall: Misrepresentations and misunderstandings,” wherein she presented twenty-four adults with four possible childhood experiences.

The experiences were presented as short written anecdotes, and culled from the subjects’ relatives. The false story in each case featured the subject getting lost in a shopping mall as a child. Loftus asked the relatives to provide similar stories about childhood shopping trips. The subjects were asked to write anything they remembered about each experience, or to write that they did not remember the experience.

According to her study, six thought they remembered at least part of the one that never happened. One to two weeks later, the subjects were interviewed again. This time they were told that one of the stories had been false, and asked to identify which one. Nineteen correctly chose the shopping mall story; five did not. It is not clear whether those five students were part of the previous group of six.

Researchers Lynn Crook and Martha Dean have written several articles critiquing (among other things) the ethical and methodological issues involved with Loftus’ study.¹² However, even if her study had been airtight, it has very little relevance to the question of whether repressed memories are false.

Why?

Because a repressed memory of something traumatic which is unlike anything the family thinks happened does not have a whole lot of similarity to six out of twenty-four adults thinking they remember all of several similar childhood stories.

That is, repressed memories are generally of scary, threatening experiences. They are very different from what we convinced ourselves our childhood looked like. Loftus’ study, and every other study I have seen which supported her findings, focuses entirely on seeing if it is possible to convince people that something happened to them which is very much like other things that they, and the researchers, know happened.

By way of example, a 1995 study by K. Pezdek and C. Roe entitled “The effect of memory trace strength on suggestibility” found that three of twenty subjects falsely recalled getting lost in (again) a shopping mall, but none recalled getting a painful enema.

And in a review of “Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law,” (1998) attorney Helen L. McGonigle describes how the authors undertook a detailed review of thirty studies of memory and child sexual abuse, and found that “while base rates varied, the average rate of full amnesia across all thirty studies was found to be approximately 29.6%.” That means that these studies consistently found that almost thirty percent of subjects had completely repressed the memory of the abuse; that’s not even counting the many people who remembered only part of what happened to them. The authors also found that “the gist of recovered memories is generally accurate although perhaps not the insignificant, peripheral details.”¹⁴

Sidran Press, which publishes information on trauma, dissociation, and post-traumatic stress disorder, has a chart explaining what makes someone repress a memory:¹³

Factors in Continuous Memory     versus     Factors in Dissociation/Amnesia

Single traumatic event                       Multi-event (repetitive)Natural or accidental cause                  Deliberate human causeAdult victim                                 Child victimValidation and support                       Denial and secrecy

Like much information from Sidran Press, it is not true for everyone. But it is a good basic explanation of current findings in memory and trauma research.

So Who Are These People, Anyway?

The following does not represent their entire board or organization by any means; it’s just a quick wander through their biggest names from the past ten years.
Read the rest of this entry »

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they often say that alcoholism is not the problem, it is just a symptom. Many people, especially in early recovery, enthusiastically cast aside drinking for another addictive behavior, and just about everyone in every twelve-step program discovers myriad other self-destructive behaviors they’re engaging in as they take inventory of their lives. These behaviors echo past trauma and abuse. The true problem is that these traumas have taught us that we deserve pain and chaos. We have learned to seek out and recreate our unresolved traumatic experiences even after the original harmful situations have passed. It is immaterial whether we perpetuate it by starving ourselves, berating ourselves, short-circuiting our bodies with harmful substances, underearning, choosing and staying with abusive people, cutting our bodies, or something else entirely.

So what’s the solution?

Well, don’t worry, we have our top psychologists, scientists, and therapists working on that around the clock… oh. We don’t?

Well. Here are a few pieces that might fit.

Every twelve-step program uses the same twelve steps, regardless of the behavior being addressed. And, I believe, part of the reason that this is done and that it works for all our addictive “symptoms” must be that it addresses this core problem. Let’s see what the steps ask us to do that might be vital to recovery from trauma and abuse.

The first step, of course, is to admit that we have a problem. It is a very profound step: it helps us begin to see what we are doing that is harming us. It shows us what is not working, what we want to change. It helps us begin to be honest with ourselves and others, instead of harming ourselves with denial and fear.

Step two gives us the opportunity to explore what we believe about the universe, and what parts of that have and haven’t worked for us. We get to see what has worked for others, too, and see that other people have found relief from these painful problems. In step two, we begin to experience hope that things can be different, which I think is crucial to any kind of recovery.

In step three, we learn to ask for help. We seek a willingness to seek out healing from outside, trustworthy sources – to stop trying to do it all ourselves – to realize that our methods have not been working for us. This is mindblowing for many people, especially for those of us who have learned not to ask for help because we are just a burden. Beginning to understand that that is not actually true, and to see ourselves as worthwhile human beings who deserve support and who deserve to get our needs met, is nothing short of a miracle.

The fourth step brings us back to that honesty. We take a long, hard look at our lives, being as honest as we can about our resentments, fears, and relationships in general. This has tremendous implications: it can lead to much deeper clarity about what things have been like and what is harming us; it can bring us back to the emotions that we’ve numbed for so long; it can teach us where our boundaries really are and what we need to do to take responsibility for them. It is an incredible and far-reaching exercise.

The fifth step is even more terrifying for many people than the fourth. It asks us to share everything we learned in the fourth step with another human being and with a higher power of our own understanding. But when we share this with someone who is trustworthy, we learn amazing things. We learn that we are not alone. We learn that our feelings and actions and experiences are not so horrifying that people will run from us if they find out the truth about them. We even learn that those feelings, actions, and experiences are not who we are. And with all of this this comes a greater ability to trust, and a step toward self-acceptance.

Step six builds on that fourth step work too. We get to look at all of the behaviors that are harming us and start thinking about the possibility of maybe someday not doing them anymore. We get to just be willing for things to change, and to know that for the moment, that is enough.

So with the first six steps, what do people get that helps them recover? The beginnings of honesty; hope; help; reality; feelings; boundaries; trust; the possibility of change; and a door opens toward self-acceptance and compassion. That compassion is not located in any specific step, but undergirds the whole process. It’s the motor that powers all our healing.

What on earth could be left for the last six to provide? Read the rest of this entry »