Solve All of Your Problems Ever, Permanently

You’re so gullible! Except wait, I know you clicked on this because the headline sounds like a joke. It sort of is. I plan to tell the sour truth! The best you can hope for is to solve some of your problems, occasionally, and even that might be a stretch.

You can’t do it on your own. Self-sufficiency is an alluring myth. Most human tragedies arise from coordination failures. The best way to get ahead is to convince people to go along with your plans. Good luck with that. And remember: lifehacks are garbage.

Adelaide Crapsey’s poem “The Lonely Death” is instructive:

In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them a-flame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.

That’s what happens when you try to be self-sufficient. Hmm, maybe it does sound a whole lot better than shriveling up in a nursing home.