Jul 30 2006
Life hacking for travel
I’ve heard of computer hacking and phone phreaking, but the concept of life hacking and work hacking was a new concept for me when I first heard of it a year ago. In a nutshell, it’s a bit if a geakier way to maximize your the time in your life or at work through streamlining and making how you do things more efficient. For example, when at work, e-mail can be a real pain when it continues to come in non-stop throughout the day. So you could set your e-mail client to check for mail and ping you every 30 minutes or hour, so you can concentrate on work.
A former colleague of mine, wrote about life-hacking while traveling in a recent blog post at churbuck.com. He’s on the road most of the week for his job and spoke about a great way to pack for the week to maximize his time at airports, hotels and ease of travel with the myriad of gear he uses in a typical day. Of course, packing and gear is right up my alley–heck, I have two buck departments in my wallet alone!
His post concentrates on the pros of packing with just a backpack and a duffel bag. So, for a trip to visit Randye’s folks in New Jersey this weekend, I decided to give his theory the test. All of my books, electronics, laptop computer, telescope lenses and things I might need readily were packed into my backpack, a Jansport pack with two large main compartments, a smaller book compartment forward of that, a side-entry pocket forward of that and two outside mesh pockets on the front and side. I can pack quite a bit in this bag and it makes for a great over-nighter or common day pack. It’s a sturdy pack which has given me years of service.
Everything else was packed into a small, wheeled weekender suitcase that can accommodate suits, sports jackets, dress pants and such without getting them too wrinkled. (Here’s where I differ from David as I have yet to experience the evils of wheeled luggage.) In that I packed my clothes, shoes, ditty bag, a fleece pullover if it became too cold and a rain jacket. This luggage is the perfect carry-on size for overhead space on planes, although it fits snugly in one corner of the trunk of the car as it did this weekend.
Minimizing space and maximizing my efficiency left me room for a few extra items, such as bringing my rather large Dobsonian telescope to do some star-gazing with Randye’s dad (I promised him a peak at the stars and didn’t want to wait until Thanksgiving or later. And summer is perfect astronomy weather) and my hiking boots so I could get some walking exercise in the mornings while continuing to break them in for the trail. But then again, there’s always room for the ever-important pair of boots because jeeze, a man never knows when the shit’s going to hit the fan and he’ll need to hit the wilderness in a tactical manner.
My life-hacking is working out so far. Yesterday, at about 15:30 (3:30 p.m. for you civilians) and I just reached into the back seat to quickly grab my iBook from my pack and I wrote this post as Randye battled traffic on the Garden State Parkway with the driving fury of Cruella DeVille in Disney’s 101 Dalmations. “Just keep your head down, don’t look up and mind your business Paul …”
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