Out-of-office emails are too boring. But I made my last one fun! Check it out:
Have you ever tried incubating baby leopard geckos [1]? One of my former housemates, Nicholas, did so. It’s interesting because leopard geckos use temperature-dependent sex determination [2] – becoming male or female depends on the temperature at which they’re incubated.
To become female, eggs should be incubated between 80 and 82 F. Males should be in 88 – 91 F. Temperatures in between those two extremes produce a mix of sexes, and anything above and below those two extremes will create either sex or will kill the eggs. He tried to incubate females and was successful for most!
As I listened to Nicholas tell me about this, I pondered how constraints can actually produce certain types of growth in living creatures.
It made me think about how this applies to work as well. Constraints can actually make us more creative, produce new ideas, and create new ways to grow. Stanford’s d.school [3] and Johns Hopkins University [4] professors, among others, back up the idea that constraints can be advantageous.
So the question I started asking myself and would pose to you too – what kinds of constraints could we try placing on our work or life to stimulate new ideas and new ways to grow (temperature, budget, acquisition channel, environment, target persona, time, etc.)?
As you may be able to tell, I’m out of the office. Looking forward to connecting when I’m back on June 6th.
See you soon,
Grant
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Hyperlinks from the actual email are in the comments in case you want to dive deeper.
Shoutout to Russ Chadinha for being the inspiration that OOO emails can be fun!
– If a tradeshow gives you the contact info of all attendees, do NOT email all of them after the event. 
Mason Cosby about Marketing! The first part is about my career journey; the second part is about my career advice for Marketers.