Some call it cheating, I call it living outside of the box.
It's not about breaking the rules, or writing the answers on little bits of paper. It's learning the rules and then circumventing them in a way that makes the end result better! Looking at why something isn't working out and then rethinking the idea until it does. Failure is the best way to learn, but a good life hacker thinks through the possible outcomes and finds the path to success. From an early age, I always questioned the rules that were laid out for me, and as a little kid there were PLENTY of rules! Getting in trouble was inefficient and lead to less time for play, so creative thinking was required. Like any exercise, the more you do something, the faster and stronger you get. Soon, I was troubleshooting all parts of my life and this spilled out to others as well. I was tech support for everyone that I knew and not just with technology. Even a great life hacker can sometimes lose sight of the most important thing in life. My younger self knew that the reason to hack anything was always to make sure there would be enough time to play... to be happy. Somewhere along the lines I lost sight of that. Wrapped up in finding solutions, I forgot that the whole point was to have fun. Sometimes tech support needs to go offline and the kid needs to go out and play. So here I am... welcome to my playground.
