Two Ways to Spice Up the Workday

Now let me tell you, I have a bone to pick with Confucius. Yes, that Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. One of his most famous quotes is, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Well that just is not true. With the Powerball jackpot now over $1.5 billion and the trending hashtag, what would you do if you won the money – I have not heard one person say keep working. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but it is work.  And if I win the money: 

Moving on. Most days at the office are are great but some afternoons need a little spark and for that, I have two suggestions on how to spice up your workday. The first, if you are on corporate Gchat use the animations built into the system for a bit of fun. I found this Huffington Post article which has great round up of these animations as well as a bit of the back story, in fact, the animations started out as an inside joke for Google’s designers!  With dozens to choose from these are my top four: 

One of my favorite and most used is “hahahaha” which will send the message as text and insert a very happy little yellow smiley. The next two are shortcuts, typing /ponies and /bikeshed respectively will either send a flock of ponies across the bottom of your chat or turn the chat screen a different color.  The last, a word I do not use except that it triggers this animation, is “woot” – doesn’t he look  happy? 

My second suggestion is to reply to internal emails with GIFs. A note of caution, think about your company and the culture of your office before sending GIFS, and also think about the people on the email and whether or not they would find it amusing /appropriate. Here are some of my favorites: 

When someone has good news you did not expect:

 When someone says something that makes no sense: 

 

 

When it’s time for happy hour: 

 

 

When the client loved your work: 

 

 

 When someone asks if it is lunch time yet: 

 

 

Or as a reaction to any good news: 

 

 

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How do you spice up the workday?