Productivity is all the rage these days, but life hacks are trite and only get you so far. What you need is something more powerful than a new way to organize your life by colour-coding your tupperware. You need a way to remove the things that suck the life and time out of you every single day.
Consider this: you’re walking along the street, minding your own business, as everyone should, when you’re stopped by a stranger to ask for directions. Not only must you stop walking, which is incredibly inefficient as any physicist knows, but all the thoughts in your head that you were processing freely and without interruption are now, well, interrupted.
It gets worse. This stranger is now talking, and so you must focus on his stupid words, spend brain power trying to figure out if he’s about to scam you, ask for money, or is genuinely in need of directions. All because he refuses or is too stupid to use Google Maps on his phone. Your first instinct is naturally to blame him for his rudeness, but the truth is the problem is not with him, but with you.
Perhaps you were not self-aware at the time, but it was clear now to anyone watching that you were smiling as you walked. It was a warm day, you were feeling good about being alive, and enjoying the sound of birds chirping in the air. In short, you were being a damned fool.
Had you taken the time to observe the pigeon poop beneath your feet, the smell of urine in the air, the leaking overpass which you are approaching, or the myriad ways in which your life could end any second, you wouldn’t be so quick to smile. You would, perhaps, scowl, or better yet, frown.
A frown tells the world that you are not open for business. A frown is an open invitation not to fuck with you. It says please don’t approach me for I may do something we will both regret.
Have you ever walked down the corridors of your work, with a smile on your face? Perhaps you have, but I hope not for much longer. For a smile at work tells people that you are not busy enough. It tells people that you are open to a conversation about the weather, sports, the news, the lottery, or some other terrible topic that no one in their right mind should ever discuss openly. A smile is an invitation to ask why you are smiling. Nothing that would ever make you happy is ever worth telling another person.
Perhaps you are happy because something good happened to you. That is only an opportunity for someone to tell you about how that thing isn’t even that great. Did you just buy that car you’ve been thinking about? Well, my brother’s friend just bought that same car and it’s been in the shop for 10 days trying to figure out what’s wrong with the electrical. Oh, were you smiling because you were enjoying the fact that it’s Friday? Allow me to bore you with pictures of my vacation and children for the next 20 minutes. Were you enjoying the sun on this fine summer day? Allow me to yell similes about that ass from the inside of grey ’94 Civic.
Chapter 1: The Power of Negative Thinking
Chapter 2: The Downward Spiral
Chapter 3: Become genuinely uninterested in people
Chapter 4: Give constant and sincere criticism
Chapter 5: Frown
Chapter 6: Getting by: how to look busy while doing nothing
Chapter 7: Stop blaming your parents, blame yourself
Chapter 8: How to lose friends and influence your cat
Chapter 9: The Power of Later
Chapter 10: The Secret (there is none, you’re an idiot)
