You’ve worked hard to establish your reputation. People rely on you. You’re efficient, professional, and thorough. But there are little moments in your day where your efficiency drops. In the shower, out for dinner with loved ones, at a baseball game.  Your smartphone has already made it easy for you turn turn these slow, private moments into twitchy multi-tasks that take 3 times as long as doing one thing at a time; in other words, they’ve become more efficient, but what about when you’re lying in the street waiting for the paramedics to arrive? How can you take this inconvenient and unscheduled break from work and turn it into a chance to show your boss just how committed you really are?

Let’s start with the basics and work our way up to a few advanced moves.

1) Activate Your Out-of-Office (OOO) Message

Sound simple enough, but you’d be surprised how many people forget to take this simple action to alert their coworkers and clients that important business will be delayed. For instance, my former coworker Mary was working on a new draft of an email to her client, Dale, when a cab suddenly and unexpectedly drove at the correct speed limit through a green light and over Mary’s neck.

Mary, ever the quick thinker, used her non-paralyzed tongue to click “Send” on her Samsung Galaxy Note’s email application and succeeded in letting Dale know that she had received his email and would respond soon. But because Mary failed to enable her OOO message, Dale’s response 30 minutes later that he was looking forward to her thoughts was not met with an appropriate and timely response. As a result, Mary would have had to attend mandatory efficiency training and personal path-finding consulting had she survived the ride to the hospital. 

Don’t be like Mary, always have your OOO preset to indicate your untimely death.

2) Delegate Your Final Responsibility

My wife’s cousin Paul was on his way to Jersey Mike’s to pick up sandwiches for a lunch meeting. While triple checking his list of sandwiches,  he turned his ankle on a paving stone and was trampled by a crowd of lawyers wearing untraceable loafers. Paul realized immediately that he could not possibly use his broken and twisted arms to carry sandwiches without getting blood and bone fragments into these mission-critical sandwiches. Rather than allow his hungry coworkers to meet without sandwiches, Paul used his last ounce of strength to lift the list of sandwiches above his head where another person could take the list and complete his task. 

Of course, by the time anyone stopped to check on him, the list was frozen in his fist through a combination of rigor mortis and congealed tissue. 

Don’t be like Paul, remember to specify the person to whom you are delegating.

3) Cash Out Your 401k

This is just common courtesy, don’t make your poor HR department do this for you.

4) Inform your Appointments That You Are Dying and Will Be, Regrettably, Unable to Attend

Sure, setting your OOO message will mean that anyone who emails you will be informed of your probable death, but what about people who don’t email you regularly? For Ed, this a key concern, as he is in the “party-planning” business and relies primarily on “Push” tactics to bring his recruits to their destiny as party-planning millionaires. Ed has set up an email that he can send to all his contacts at the push of a button. 

Dear <name>, 

Happy <Day of Week>!! Please excuse this mass email, but I had to get news to you quickly! I made nearly $100,000 last month just by helping my friends to become rich! Wouldn’t you like to know how I did that?! It’s simple, if you’ll just allow me to show you a few amazing products that I’m sure you’ll love, and your friends will love, too!! All you need to do is let me host my funeral at your home! I’ll pay for all the snacks and treats and burial, I just need you to invite all your friends who love a good deal! I’ll deliver, by Blu-Ray disc, a quick, 70 minute presentation on how to turn your life around through the power of natural ingredients such as kombucha, thistlegrass extract, and partially hydrogenated soybean resin. You’ll be making money in no time, and everyone you recruit to your Kombucha-bash parties will pay a percentage of their earnings up to you! Please contact Jonas Funeral Home for further details on the whereabouts of my corpse.

Your dreams are alive!

– Ed

Needless to say, Ed’s sales numbers quadrupled immediately following his death by being cooked alive when flying a hang-glider over the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant.

5) Write a Transition Plan in Your Own Blood

Listen, it’s not easy to take over for a beloved employee, especially when that employee died tragically in the street. But if you want to help your replacement take on your work, make sure you leave behind a record of your job duties. Now, you should already be keeping a folder full of FAQs and instructions on your daily duties, but I get it, we don’t all keep it up all the time. So, while you’re waiting for the ambulance to come and take you to the hospital, just use your fingernail and your spilled blood to jot down a few things you think your replacement will need to know. 

NOTE: DO NOT EXPOSE ANY COMPANY SECRETS BY WRITING THEM IN BLOOD IN THE STREET. 

Thanks for your time and attention. Please keep in mind that this is all just advice, if you want to know your company’s official policy on death transitions, please speak to your company’s HR representative and mention that you have concerns about your ability to remain efficient and productive even in death. They may have some important information on how your company can best use your fresh remains for nourishment. 

Good day, and good business!