Everything I needed to relax and forget about all of my stress was packed into a single bag. This meant sun, sand and a self-imposed limit on technology was on the horizon. Coincidentally, my stress-free family vacation fell on the first week of the Olympics. I wasn't too keen on spending my days and evenings parked in front of the TV when there was a whole beach to enjoy and cooler full of Victory Golden Monkey to drink. But how could I miss the Olympics? Then I stumbled on a genius solution. If this then that or IFTTT. It's sort of like baking but for the internet. You can create a variety of IFTTT recipes to make internet life easier. The recipes are a combination of triggers and actions based on various channels you can activate and link to your account. I created a recipe that allowed ESPN (the channel) to push me a text message (the action) every time the U.S. won a gold medal during the London 2012 Games (the trigger). It was wonderful, and I felt so on top of everything. The only problem was holding back the news until my dad caught up and watched the games later that night.

Here are few other useful IFTTT recipe examples I've managed to create:

I'm so busy sometimes the first of the month can zoom past me unnoticed. Then I feel like a huge jerk for forgetting to pay my rent. Now IFTTT has me covered.

I hate how sterile most blog post tweets often sound. But I figured I'd give this recipe a shot. As important as it is, I tend to forget to share my personal blog posts out on social media. Hm. I'm beginning to sense a theme here. I wonder what Forgetful Jones would think of IFTTT?

When it comes to favorite-ing tweets, I can get a little carried away. I mark tweets I want to come back to or download whatever awesome presentation people link to later. This recipe is great in that it keeps all my favorite-ed tweets in a single Evernote note. I can go back to them as often as I need to without digging through Twitter.

I'm in the process of dreaming up a recipe to remind myself to check fantasy football line-ups this season. Any ideas? What other recipes have you created? Generate your own recipes and share them with me!