Your to-do list is on lock, your calendar is up-to-date, your meeting agendas belong in the Louvre—and yet…

Even when we’re at the top of our game, there are bound to be work responsibilities that inevitably start to slip through the cracks.

• You might get lucky and remember a nearly forgotten project while you’re doing the dishes.
• Or you might wake up at 3am and realize that the client deliverable you promised a month ago is due today.

Here are a few tactical “reminder nets” so you can stop trying to remember what you know you’ve forgotten:

Live in the spreadsheet. If your team doesn’t have a master spreadsheet or project management setup for all upcoming responsibilities, sprint to Google Sheets and create one.

• If you’ve already got a system, make it a habit to check the doc at the beginning and end of every week to make sure no balls are about to get dropped.

Communicate with Future You. Use your calendar for more than meetings by adding reminder time-blocks too.

• For example, the Raise editors have a recurring calendar appointment on Friday afternoons to “Email Dan for copy edits,” just in case we’re swamped and need the nudge.

Get a second opinion. Every week during your 1:1 with your manager, leave time to review your major responsibilities for the week.

• Not only does this help you prioritize your workload and ensure you’re not missing deadlines, but it also shows how much you’re taking on right now.

Last task before you sign off. Set aside five minutes before you leave work to review everything you’ve scribbled down during the day.

• Then take those notes and formally put them into your to-do list, onto your calendar, into an email, etc.
• It’s a slightly annoying task to do at the end of the day, but it’s way more frustrating to come back tomorrow and not remember what you meant by “ripple effects 2x.”

And when in doubt, sticky it out. There’s no shame in leaving Post-its all over your desk, as long as it’s what reminds you that your presentation at the all-hands meeting has been moved to 11:30.—CS

Dive deeper: When you’re ready for the big leagues, check out Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain for more ways to organize your digital life.

Last week, meal-prep company Blue Apron put away its knife set and agreed to be acquired by food-delivery startup Wonder Group for $103 million.

• In an effort to become a “super app for food,” Wonder is expanding its strategy into at-home meals. Fingers crossed the co realizes you still have to cook the ingredients once they arrive.

Beyond giving biz news an excuse to slice and dice kitchen-related puns, this is actually a pretty standard M&A deal.

Typically, companies can grow in two ways: organic growth and, you guessed it, inorganic growth.

• Organic = internal company growth, like SunChips boosting sales by releasing a new spicy jalapeño flavor.
• Inorganic = buying your way into new areas, like PepsiCo spending $3.2 billion to acquire SodaStream and enter the “DIY” soda market.

While most of us don’t have a few bil lying around to execute our strategy, we can use the same logic to build up our teams.

Organic = expanding your team’s skills. By training and developing your team, you can move into different avenues and encourage ownership of upcoming projects.

• Consider investing in L&D reimbursements or training programs for your team so that people are motivated to pursue their own goals at work.
• Beware of: overstretching your team with new responsibilities too quickly. Remember, they’ve probably got their usual workload to consider on top of all this growth.

🧃 Inorganic = hiring new team members. The oldie but goodie of expansion—adding new people to the team.

• Adding team members with net new skills or experiences can prevent groupthink and bring interesting perspectives to your work.
• Beware of: hiring just to hire—head count shouldn’t be a vanity metric. Make sure there’s a solid case for every new addition to the team, or else you’ll create more problems than you solve.

Whichever way you decide to grow your team, just be sure to stay flexible as things shift—even if that means ordering pizza one night instead of being good and making a truffle risotto from those preportioned ingredients.

What you think influence at work is: twisting people’s emotions to get a promo.

What it actually is: understanding workplace dynamics and creating win-win scenarios to get a promo.

Influence & persuasion don’t have to feel slimy. Learn how to advocate for yourself and your team to build buy-in instead of tearing people down.

The Brew’s one-week virtual course Developing Influence at Work starts on Monday, October 23.

Reserve your spot today.

The only thing more inefficient than scrolling through jobs on LinkedIn is the nightly ritual of moving folded laundry from bed to chair.

That’s where industry- and role-specific job boards come in—to curate your search so you can finally stop spinning your wheels.

The next time you’re in the market for a new gig, tailor the process to your specifics with one of these dedicated boards:

• Work at a Startup: Y Combinator’s job board features roles at its portfolio companies (FYI this is the incubator that launched Airbnb, Reddit, and Instacart).
• Diversify Tech: A job board where companies are transparent about their diversity and inclusion efforts.
• CreativeGuild: Stay strong and resist the suits with this global directory hosted by Creative Mornings, the community org known for its breakfast lecture series.
• Idealist: Find your mission-driven soulmate org with the world’s largest social-impact job board.
• Gen Z VCs: If your birthday year begins with 20, this job board is your go-to destination for opportunities in the venture capital and tech space.
• Lenny’s Talent Collective: You may know Lenny from his eponymous podcast, but he also has a job board for product-focused roles.
• Tech Jobs for Good: It may come as a shock, but this job board is great if you’re in tech and want to do good.
• We Work Remotely: A massive job board giving you all the deets solely for remote-based roles.