Smartlife

Living a smart life means both work and play, and the truly smart realize they don’t necessarily need to be different things. The “gamification” of repetitive tasks is a great way to provide motivation at work. Thousands of office workers spend millions of hours throwing Angry Birds, clicking on Farmvilles, and analyzing grid information patterns for numerical proximity (aka Minesweeper.) But repetitively clicking and moving little numbers and icons is exactly the same as the job they’re trying to escape – so why not use the same tactics to make…

The summer sun makes it hard to think, but that’s the point. You don’t stretch out in those glorious feelgood rays to work out solutions to all of life’s problems, because stretching out is the solution. At least for a while. We get all too few hours of doing nothing in this life, which is why you might as well use some thinking time to make the most of them.

We’ve searched the net to bring the best in brilliant beach gear, and a few toys which…

When the summer sun is shining, sometimes even the beach is too much effort. You want to relax right now, and if you’ve taken the precaution of installing a pool (or the cheaper precaution of knowing someone who did) you can do exactly that. The swimming pool is the icon of conspicuous luxury, and a triumph of human technology over Mother Nature. If she can’t be bothered to install the beach in your backyard, you’ll build it yourself! The ability to float away from it all without leaving the front…

Living the Smartlife means applying intelligence to the truly important things, and hopefully you aren’t surprised by how many of those occur outside the office. It’s astonishing how many vital events are entirely over-hassled because the organizer doesn’t put in the effort, because you’d think they’d care more about their own time with friends than they do about the quarterly reports. In this article, we’re looking at some seriously slick options for that ultimate cross-denominational sacrament: the Big Game (insert relevant Bowl/Cup/Open title for your own favorite way of knocking…

Advertisements are the worst drain on your intelligence since that Star Trek brain parasite thing. At least that could be cured by a solid dose of antibiotics or, failing that, being shot by a Klingon. But before they’ve even beamed up your corpse for space jettison, there’ll be another ad break — and you’ll lose five more minutes of your life (or death) to people trying to sell you things.

Obviously the simplest and most productive way to avoid commercials is just to stop watching TV. And while you’re at…

A Smartlife means never wasting a second, because while you have access to ever-improving electronics, your time is the ultimate finite resource. Every hour you sit surfing aimlessly is a battle against waste that you just lost, and every moment you learn anything about Lady GaGa is proof that your life is going downhill. Towards a septic tank.

We’re not saying you have to work 24/7, but that you should entertain yourself properly — play isn’t the absence of work, it’s what the work is for. Even in the middle…