Nick Thacker.com

I’ve had some long history with laziness, trying to stay motivated, and productivity issues while growing up and in school. After graduating from college and starting a company, I had to force myself to stay focused on tasks at hand. Now, I feel like I’ve made some great strides toward living an actively productive lifestyle, and this blog is my way of writing about it.

I’m no expert in productivity or motivation studies, and I have no advanced degrees in hacking life or optimizing it to suit your lifestyle. But–and this is a big but–I’m not just writing about lifestyle and life hacking because it’s an interest of mine, it’s something that I’m actually doing. If you read a post about how to increase your motivation, it’s something that I’ve studied and figured out by actively doing it. 

On LiveHacked.com, you’ll find everything from hacking your kitchen to produce more affordable, 5-star meals, how to increase your productivity, get more done at work or at home, and many more tips and tricks to help you hack your life. Feel free to bookmark this site, or if you’re not that old-school, just subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up-to-date with the life hacks. If you’re in-between old-school and trendy, just grab the life-hacking emails…

As a worship leader, one of the ways I’ve challenged myself, my congregation, and my musicians has been to constantly try to grow in what we’re able to do. This means adding new music, having productive rehearsals, figuring out new arrangements, and using things called loops in worship services.

I’ve worked in churches as a worship leader/music director/youth person/helper/band rodie/trombone player for quite awhile. Currently, I’m serving as the Director of Music at a GREAT church called The Journey United Methodist Church in Kyle, Texas. We have an upbeat, contemporary liturgical-style service on Sunday mornings, and a couple of years ago we started using “loops” (backing tracks) played by a computer, in our services.

Check out Looping Worship for more information on what we do, how we do it, and how (if you’re in a band or part of a church) you can start using loops as well.

I hate reading a book and thinking, “man, I could write something better than THAT!” In all seriousness, I believe in the old adage “everyone’s got at least one novel inside of them,” and we’re gonna see if that’s true. I’m currently writing a novel called The Golden Crystal, and I’m scheduled to release it around the middle of 2012. End-of-the-world, hero-saves-us-all kind of stuff. Read more about it on this page, or go to the website for the book to see a sweet trailer and pre-order the book in hardcover format!

Secondly, back to the whole “lifestyle” thing: I believe that writing and reading is a necessary and obligatory thing that we all must do, and I think that we should all enjoy it. As such, I’ll be posting about lifestyle, life hacking, productivity, motivation, and other related books, as well as interesting tips, tricks, and ways to improve your interest in reading.

I hold a Bachelor of Music degree from Texas State University, so I guess that makes me a “musician…” I played the trombone all throughout my education, and I’m also a worship leader at my church, The Journey United Methodist Church.

I started my music career as a songwriter, busting out rhymes and cliched lyrics in my bedroom on my crappy electric guitar.

It hasn’t gotten much better, but I do have some nicer equipment these days. Eventually, I got into composition, and in 2005 my first symphony was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music (apparently the bar was pretty low that year). I started a degree in Music Composition at the University of Texas at San Antonio, but switched to Music Education shortly thereafter.

Now, I’m pretty content using computers to make the noises for me, but I still dig a good acoustic track like the good ‘ol days. Hopefully I’ll be posting some of the stuff I’ve written on here for your perusal.