Morning Brew - 👔 Best dressed

Time-saving tools and products we’re really into rn.

🔘 Be prepared the next time someone asks for your contact information with the Dot digital business card, because paper cards are so 1987.

Avoid the awkwardness of having your favorite desk at the office taken, with Slack plugin Officely. There’s no separate app for this one, so you can’t say you forgot.

Before sending that frustrated email, pause. Or go one step further, as this Fast Company article suggests, and schedule them all so you have time to change your mind.

“I don’t have work-life balance, and I don’t really care that much. I have no problem with my work spilling over into my life, because my work is my life now.”

Mark Cho is the cofounder of menswear retailer The Armoury, with four locations in Hong Kong and New York City, and the co-owner of the luxe English menswear brand Drake's. Take a peek at his passion for men’s style and clothing on YouTube.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kickoff: “I’m absolutely not a morning person. It’s just totally a waste of time for me…I get up at about 8:30 or 9am. And then I get into the office about 10 to 10:30am.”

The not-so average, average day: “Typically, I try to reserve my meals for clients. I also shoot a lot of YouTube videos, usually before 1pm, then [I’ll have] some sort of client engagement…And the afternoon [will] be creative work, or any other desk work I need to do. Sometimes dinners are opportunities for clients, and then back to the shop. And I’m usually back home by 8 to 8:30pm, [and] I have dinner. And then after dinner…my New York day starts and then that goes till about 1 or 2am.”

Delays and missteps: “You just keep grinding at ’em, right?…Especially right now, suppliers are a little shaky on deliveries because they’re having their own supply chain issues. But those are not the sort of logjams that you can resolve in a day or two. You just make everything else work around it. Like if I was meant to have my delivery of my fall/winter sports jackets by August 1, but they actually come August 21, I will have to modify my content production schedule…it’s a lot of moving parts.”

Time management: “I used to use task management apps like Asana. But I couldn’t corral everyone else into using it properly. So it became kind of pointless. Between Gmail, Tasks, and Evernote, I was able to mostly stay on top of things.”

Work-life balance: “I really like my work, to probably an unhealthy degree. And so I have to find ways to distract myself from my work…Video games have always been a huge part of my life. It’s the only thing that really stops me from thinking about work, so it’s a really good way for me to disengage. But recently, I’ve been listening to a lot more music than I used to…As a retailer, you really have to think about how you're manipulating other people's attention, but also, how you're manipulating your own attention. Your own attention is kind of like a wild beast; you do what you can to leash it.”

Setting goals: “I honestly have never really set any major goals for myself. I kind of just do. I think of my business as an extension of myself. And whatever allows me to realize myself is good enough…I don’t follow any financial targets…what I’m more interested in is, can we do this thing that I always kind of hoped we could do?”

Advice for entrepreneurs: “Please don't follow my example. I am very underqualified to be doing what I’m doing. And most of what happened is just dumb luck. If you’re going to venture into some sort of new business, you should think about what is the baseline chance of success.”

A business book rec: “Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman…it’s really insightful as a way to understand real-life statistics, and human behavior. It’s very dense; it doesn’t reward people who just want to glance at it. But if you’re willing to go back to it again and again, it’s amazing.”

Room for improvement: “I would like to be better at keeping records of my performance, just to see [if] I get better or worse…Because I think the post-mortems or even the pre-mortems are really important for anybody who’s trying to be an entrepreneur.”—MW

Your punch list for when you punch out.

Play: Let’s be honest, these days we’re all as socially awkward as eighth graders at our first dance. So, the next time you’re invited to a gathering, break out this TableTopics game to help keep the conversation light and interesting without all the cringey silence.

Watch: If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted laugh, HBO Max sitcom The Garcias follows a Latino-American family that gathers for a roller coaster of a summer vacation in a Mexico beach house.

Drink: It’s not like there aren’t enough coffee variations already. But if you’re really feeling experimental, sparkling coffee (yes, you read that right) adds a fizzy, citrusy zest to your caffeine fix.

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Burning questions of our time.

Your thoughts on what it would take to get you back in the office:

Literally nothing would make me ever return to an office. I got SO MUCH of my time back. Losing that time to a commute is never an option again.—Lisa

Paid parking, significant salary increase (to cover transit/transportation expenses), and flexible hours. In fact, having a hybrid schedule would be nonnegotiable because having uninterrupted time has become vital to my productivity.—Anthony

Stopping workplace drug testing in its tracks:

There’s a quiet conversation that’s been happening in workplaces around the country surrounding recreational drug use. In April, the House of Representatives shocked Americans when it passed a bill to federally decriminalize marijuana—a decision that hints we may be moving in the direction of drug decriminalization.

Many employers didn’t get the memo, though, and still require their employees to go through regular drug testing. While coffee alternative brand MUD\WTR is eons ahead of the rest of us and allows its employees to “microdose” on the clock, that’s not the reality for 99.9% of US workers.

Besides people whose jobs require them to work with heavy machinery, children, patients, or other protected parties, should companies do away with drug testing for good? Give us your spiciest takes by replying to this email!—MW