The typical high school morning routine: Stumble out of bed ten minutes late, jump in the shower, and grab food on the way out the door. Time and efficiency are the keys to achieving a perfect morning routine. The benefit of shortening the time to get out of the house in the morning is extra minutes of sleep. “Lifehacking” is the act of finding tasks that simplify life. Michael Agger’s article, “The Quest for the Perfect Morning Routine”, describes the ongoing challenge of “lifehacking” a perfect routine. Self-help websites give readers vague and misleading information. The websites suffocate the reader with procedures that simplify the life of the poster. According to Agger, “Lifehacking” leave one “like a bug to the bug zapper, returning to lifehacking sites in search of a magic aphorism for all of their deficiencies.”

Agger describes morning routines that range from complex two hour checklists to six minute sprints to work; however, these routines are specialized for one person’s wants and needs. A business man in the city needs a brief morning getaway while a stay-at-home mom has no time restriction. If the information does not match the lifestyle of the reader, the information is useless. The reader will continue to pore over the databases in search of an article that suits their lifestyle. This euphoric solution may be discovered after days, after weeks, after months, or may remain hidden is cyberspace.
This theory can be applied to all aspects of life. Individuals must learn from their mistakes. True benefit comes from personal experience. Trial and Error cannot be beat when searching for self enlightenment. One’s solution to a problem may not work for another.


People looking for a few tips on how to improve their lives get swamped by pages upon pages of self-help sites. This information overload leaves readers confused and, more times than not, worse off than before. The effort put into trying to find the perfect a routine outweighs the benefits received. It is better to sacrifice a few minutes of ones day with minor imperfections than to comb through the wasteland of information in search of the Holy Grail of daily routines.