People Say My OOO Auto-Replies are Life-Changing
The beauty part: if you do OOOs well
enough, people will only email you when
they know you’re not there.
I will be OOO from August 15 to August 22 with no access to email. Many of you already know that, so your email was undoubtedly meant to elicit an auto-reply brimming with the worldview-shattering Thought Experiments, Hacks, and How-To’s for which my OOO messages have justly risen to online fame.
If, unlike me, you are very much in the office, and you are riddled with workday anxieties and haunted by modern angst phantoms of all kinds (of the sort I left behind the moment I clicked to add my boarding pass to iPhone wallet), you have emailed the right place because I am a LIFE HACKER and very much an INFLUENCER. People are talking about my PERSONAL BRAND, and how it never takes a day off because it’s baked right into my AUTHENTIC SELF.
With those bonafides in mind, you can be confident this LISTICLE of the TOP 10 COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL “hacks” is a surefire path to FIND YOUR BLISS without the costly crutch of vacationing. It’s life-changingly simple:
Out of the blue, for no reason, send someone you know $1 on Venmo. Heck, send it to yourself. But most of all, send me $1 on Venmo. Include a note about how nice things might happen unexpectedly at any time. For extra credit, add additional dollars. Do all this as often as your budget permits.
Look at water. Just look at it. Could be a lake, sure. Ocean. Swimming pool. Frosty pitcher of suds. Staring at a clean toilet bowl counts and has the added benefit of making you laugh when you realize you’re staring at the toilet. If you look at water in any form, you’ll experience the oldest form of nostalgia, something to do with how we all emerged from primordial soup.
Count backward from your area code. Less helpful in the 202 than the 916, but still. Do not try this after trying #9 below.
Repeat the phrase “this is ridiculous, it’s not like we’re curing cancer here” the number of times required for you to believe it. Unless you work at a place where they are, in fact, curing cancer. If you work at a place like that, please get right back to work.
Clench your fists. I forget what comes next, but I think breathing and unclenching is involved. You may need to experiment a little on this one.
Find yourself a Stress Less Text Buddy. Send them random texts like “cool moss brudda cool moss” and “it’s time for your 3:45 chill pill” and just maybe like “ooohhhhhmmmmmm". If they don’t return the favor, find yourself another Stress Less Text Buddy.
Convert fear to excitement.
Peel an orange. Smell the orange. Eat the orange. Compost the orange peel. Maybe save a little twist for #9.
Fill a little sandwich bag full of ice cubes and put it on your wrists. Apparently, the same nerve endings that control the part of our brains responsible for anxious thoughts also terminate in the wrists. When you cool the blood flow to these areas by doing this anxiety hack, you literally slow down racing thoughts. It makes sense, because many people also feel warm when anxious. This is a function of increased heart rate shunting blood flow to the extremities. The key to the technique is to add the ice cubes into the two Old Fashioneds that you drink in rapid succession right afterward.
Re-read the above, laugh at the absurd things we do to wrangle our own neurochemistry, and the comic tyranny of the human fight or flight response. HA HAHA, humans are funny creatures! Then pet a cat or a dog, drink some chamomile tea, take a hot shower, and cue the Marconi Union Spotify playlist. Also, look into CBD.
There. You just hacked you, from the comfort of your own cubicle.
If you have any urgent requests, feel free to text me.
