Did you know it takes 47 muscles to frown but just one to log off Slack? Ah, if only it were that easy. Even if you’ve slashed through your whole to-do list by 5pm, chances are some random issue is going to crop up right as you’re putting on your coat.

Since “work-life balance” shouldn’t just be a woodcut sign to hang in a beachside Airbnb bathroom, we’ve taken matters into our own hands.

Here’s the skinny on how to react to the top three situations likely to ruin your plans for the evening:

When your boss asks you to complete an urgent project by tomorrow morning. As soon as you see the Slack notification, you know this means you’ll be working until Abbott Elementary comes on live.

• Since the project really does need to get done, communicate how you’ll be shifting future timelines in your favor.
• Try: “Finalizing this project means I’ll have to stay on late tonight. I’m happy to do that, but I will likely be signing off early tomorrow.”

When a teammate asks for a hand on a time-sensitive deliverable. We all say we’re team players on LinkedIn, but here’s your chance to show it IRL.

• If you’re willing and able to help, let them know you’re in, but make sure you give a hard-stop time up front. Be as vague or specific as you like—“a previous engagement later tonight” works fine.
• Plus, the next time you’ve got your own Little Fires Everywhere moment at work, you know who you can call for help.

When your boss consistently pings you after hours, and it’s not for emergencies. There are two ways to navigate this.

• If you’re cool as a cucumber, wait until the next day to respond.
• But if you know you’ll lie awake all night if you don’t respond right away, send a quick message like: “Sure thing, will address this early tomorrow” or even “Yep! And in the future, can you schedule these non-time-sensitive messages for the following morning?”

Rather than slinking down the back stairwell to get out of the office unnoticed, be up-front about your after-hours boundaries. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with leaning on an old faithful emoji when you’re looking to wrap things up. —CS

Last week, Lyft’s founders announced they’re fine walking the extra block and are stepping down as CEO and president of the company.

• In the 10+ years since the co was founded, it saw a meteoric rise but couldn’t compete with its power-hungry rival. While Uber decided to Pac-Man its way into food delivery, alcohol delivery, you name it, Lyft has struggled to keep up.

It appears the company is opting for a new leader at the helm to try to turn the ship around.

You may not have a board of directors hinting that you’ve overstayed your welcome, so how do you know when it’s time to put in those two weeks? Here are a few ways other leaders have sliced and diced this.

• When you feel like you’ve stopped growing: In 2008 Sheryl Sandberg left Google after 5+ years growing online sales. She had wanted to become chief operating officer there, but after being rebuffed, she found somewhere else to be COO: Facebook.
• When you’re not doing what you really want to be doing: In the early 2000s, Bill Simmons was writing for the late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live. But he left after a year and half because he wanted to focus on sports writing. Flash forward to 2020, when he sells his sports and pop culture website, The Ringer, for $250m to Spotify.
• When you’re ready for work to take a back seat: After nine years running YouTube and over two decades since renting her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin when Google was just getting started, Susan Wojcicki retired earlier in 2023 on her own terms to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about.”

And as for perfectly timing a work transition, don’t stress too much in that department—after all, it took Lyft almost three years to ditch the pink mustache.

For anyone who’s put their New Year’s resolutions on the back burner, just remember that the beginning of Q2 is the low-key version of January 1—but with less pressure and more floral outfits.

So now’s the time to jump back on the “no meeting” bandwagon and actually make space for a lunch break. In the Brew’s Take Back Your Time digital toolkit, you’ll learn how to leverage your unique schedule so you can gracefully bow out of sh*tty meetings, build your optimal workweek, and much more.

You’ll walk away with the next two weeks of your time at work completely optimized—and with the tools to continue owning your schedule all the way to Q4.

Customize your copy here.

Let’s play a game. We took five popular companies and scrambled their names into anagrams. Can you figure out which companies are which?

For example: Grim newborn Morning Brew

1. Law tram
2. USA beers hunch
3. Enviously unset monotheist
4. Brew cash clash
5. Team

Work Hacks is where we ask industry experts about the best tools and frameworks for simplifying the inefficient or boring things we all end up doing at the office.

Allen Au is based in Southern California, where he’s a crypto CFO consultant and a member of the Alumni of Learning Brew Advisory Board. Here’s his No. 1 work hack:

“If you hate making sure data is synced and up-to-date between multiple Google Sheets and you’ve been doing it manually by copy/pasting or just eyeballing it, then =ImportRange is your best friend.

• You can use this function to pull data from a ‘source’ dataset (one that needs continuous updates or that you reference a lot) into whatever other Google Sheet you’re working with. You can even filter the data into smaller datasets to keep your new sheet nice and neat.

Bonus: Any updates made to the source data will automatically refresh.

If you’re bootstrapping a biz or you’re part of a nimble team, =ImportRange will save you from being overloaded with all kinds of data.”