Even if you’re a self-proclaimed “productive person,” we’re willing to bet that sometimes your calendar still looks like the worst 12-layer cake ever—six hefty meetings and six 15-minute dead zones in between. Don’t worry, there are better desserts out there.

Enter: time blocking. This boils down to dividing your day into blocks of time and designating a specific task for each block. Your to-do list can finally talk to your schedule.

Here’s an example of a time-blocked calendar:

Sounds idyllic, no? Alas, most of us don’t live in a world where all our meetings can be neatly packaged into a few hours and tied with a red ribbon. So here’s how to use time blocking to your advantage even when work gets in the way.

🫡 When your boss adds you to meetings at the last minute: Not only does your blood pressure rise, but the flow of your day is interrupted. Take back your time by reacting with 15-min buffer blocks around these syncs. That time is yours—go for a walk, crank through emails, or sit at your desk and eat Twizzlers.

When you’re getting constant pings and emails: Add between one and three blocks on your calendar each day when you focus on asynchronous communication. Outside those time blocks, though, you’re either doing deep work or in other meetings, so pause your notifications or even set your Slack status to Away.

When a client wants constant check-ins and a finished deliverable: For all our client-facing readers, we see you. Even when you’re at the mercy of mind-boggling wishes, try adding reactive time blocks after those meetings to complete the project or decompress.

Time blocking isn’t the silver bullet that solves all our calendar problems, but it’s still a valuable tool for prying loose a few hours to get sh*t done. Just don’t forget to craft tomorrow’s schedule ahead of time, so you’re not playing high-stakes Jenga with your cal moments before a meeting.—CS

Dive deeper: Time blocking isn’t the only tool in the calendar shed. Todoist outlines other tactics like task batching and day themes.

Last month, WeWork got some news worse than complaints that the kombucha keg exploded in the communal kitchen: a delisting warning notice from the New York Stock Exchange.

• The co went public in 2021 at over $11 per share, and its stock price chart has resembled the Tower of Terror’s freefall since 2022.
• In the past 30 days of trading, the company’s stock price has been consistently below a dollar, meaning it could be booted from the NYSE. It has six months to turn things around.

When you’ve gotten feedback that you haven’t done a task well at work, it can feel as bad as walking barefoot through NYC. Here are seven ways to bounce back and improve for next time—without having to chug tequila at the office:

• Ask for examples that do stick the landing so you can study up
• Ask a coworker to co-create with you next time
• Practice in a low-stakes environment
• Take a course on the topic or do research on your own
• Ask for advice from someone outside your work bubble
• Break down your improvement goal into tactical small steps
• And if you really feel hopeless or don’t want to improve, maybe try to delegate to someone else (within reason)

Plus, when nothing else works, just remember that you can always sell your story to Hulu execs looking for the next big biz scandal.

Quick storytime: You’re hard at work writing a fantastically popular newsletter about how to level up in your career. Your cowriter and editor, who’s also your boss, hasn’t hit a few article deadlines recently. You need those pieces to keep readers happy, but you also don’t want to make your boss mad by nagging them.

What do you do?

1. Stand over their shoulder and watch them type out each article
2. Bring it up in an all-hands meeting
3. Subtweet them in the newsletter itself

For anyone not able to choose “3,” there’s a better option—taking our Difficult Convos at Work sprint.

This one-week, virtual course begins on May 15. And since you’re a Raise subscriber, you’ll get it for our lowest-price offer.

So click here to secure your seat before it’s too late and you’re stuck writing the damn ad yourself.

If your company doesn’t have an arrow in its logo, is it even a successful company? Sure, you could use a cartoon bird or a half-eaten apple, but to really show that a company has direction, a literal signpost is the tried-and-true call to action.

Above, we’ve clipped the arrow portions of the logos from six major orgs. See how many companies you can identify just from these triangles. (Then scroll to the bottom of this email to check your work.)

Read: Emma Watson, the cleverest witch in our class, is back—this time helping run a gin company?

Watch: How to ace your next job interview (hint: take breaks).

Travel: Want to go to Europe but used all your vacation days already? Here’s a breakdown of all the European digital nomad visas available for you and your work laptop right now.

Listen: Jargon city, here we come. Get the full scoop on the cult of Corporate America, one “synergy” at a time.

Read: How to get better at learning from experience.

Buy: Coffee and Excel, the ultimate dynamic duo. Add a little spice to your analysis with the best-selling Freak in the Sheets mug.