Breaking numbers down into percentages allows you to see things from another angle and truly understand their impact. All of which leads to making better decisions with your data.

A number on its own doesn’t say much—adding the context is what tells the full story.

• Say your business makes $1 million this quarter. That’s a lot, right? It depends. If you made $200k last quarter—hell yes, that’s 400% growth. But if you made $2m last quarter? You’re in huge trouble (and down 50%).
• Percentages help put that $1m into context.

Here are three ways you can use percentages in your job to contextualize your data quickly:

A part of the whole. This takes your number and shows how it contributes to a larger data point. To calculate, take the part and divide it by the whole.

• For example, you could divide a product line’s annual revenue of $2m (the part) by your company’s annual revenue of $5m (the whole) to get that product’s percentage contribution to total revenue of 40%.

Year-over-year growth. This puts any data point into the context of where it was last year and how much it has changed.

• The equation is: (Year 2 / Year 1) – 1.
• For example, if you sold 100 gadgets this year (Year 2) and sold 80 gadgets last year (Year 1), your year-over-year growth rate is (100 / 80) – 1. That’s 0.25, or 25% growth.

Progress to a goal. Percentages here show how close you are to achieving your goal. Calculate this like you would for a part of a whole—aka take the part and divide it by the whole.

• For example, if you’re tracking your annual sales, and you’re currently at $100,000, but your annual goal is $300,000, you’d do ($100,000 / $300,000). So you’re 33% of the way to your final goal.

Ultimately, using percentages is a simple tool that adds context to your business, makes you sound smarter in meetings, and helps you make better decisions.—KL

Say goodbye to freezer burn and bent spoons. Last week, consumer goods mega-company Unilever decided to share a dozen ice cream “reformulation patents” in an effort to reduce energy emissions industry-wide.

• We’ll give you the Fudgesicle math version of the patents: Ice cream can now stay cold at 10 degrees Fahrenheit, instead of the industry standard 0 degrees.
• This may seem like a small difference, but Unilever’s Global Ice Cream R&D Centre (dream company alert) has found this reduces energy by 25% per freezer cabinet. Bonus: It also reduces the cooling costs.

Besides granting us a now-guiltless Klondike bar, Unilever’s move highlights how the small stuff really does build up. While we can’t all run ice cream experiments as our full-time jobs, we can work on incremental innovation with our own teams.

So whether you’re an individual contributor or the team lead, here are three ways to make things just a little bit better now—to make things a lot better later for yourself , your team , or your business .

Time-block. If you’re not already doing this, start with the biggest time suck of all: emails. Put a 30-minute hold on your calendar every day and then only check your inbox during that time.

• If even thinking of ignoring emails makes you more nervous than sending a direct message in Zoom, split it up into two 15-minute intervals—once in the morning and then before you sign out for the day.
• (Plus, get the full lowdown on optimizing your email habits from Make Time.)

Define success creatively. Take a page out of Amazon’s operating playbook and ask that, before your team starts something new, you all write a future press release announcing the launch of this soon-to-be-created project.

• Why? Being crystal clear on what success looks like makes your team more focused during the project timeline.

Create personal user guides. Improve cross-functional communication by letting your coworkers know what makes you tick via a “personal user guide”—a few slides or a quick doc that explains how you work best.

• For example, check out a16z Podcast host Steph Smith’s personal user manual. It includes an overview of her strengths and weaknesses, work preferences, and the fact that she’s a night owl. (“Don’t be surprised if I message you late at night! I don’t expect you to respond.”)
• Creating a personal user guide will take about 15 minutes of legwork, but just think about how many group project meltdowns will be avoided in the future thanks to these.

Small changes can generate big returns, but some things should always stay the same—like opening up the freezer and saying the same old lie: that you’ll only have a few bites of Cherry Garcia.

Tired: making decisions based on the CEO’s vibes.

Wired: backing your team’s choices with legit data.

We’re launching a one-week virtual course on how to make better decisions with data. What will you walk away with?

• With data in hand, you’ll become more confident in the choices you’re making, while also making other people more confident in you.
• And here’s a plot twist: You’ll also understand the limitations of data in decision-making (for your own choices and when evaluating other people’s decisions).

Bonus: You don’t have to be part of the analytics department to benefit.

The course starts on December 4—reserve your spot today.

Hot take: You can tell a lot about how a company treats its employees based on its approach to the calendrical awkwardness of Thanksgiving. Do employees get to sleep off their tryptophan hangover the Friday after? Or is it back to biz as usual on the 24th?

Knowing how to approach PTO is a strategic advantage for businesses to keep top talent. And some cos go above and beyond, offering out-of-the-box opportunities for their employees to get out of office. Here are a few of our favorites, based on our level of jealousy:

Last month, Slack gave one week off to all employees. Not for relaxation, nor de-stressing, nor as a reward for a job well done—but for catching up on internal training.

On top of a $1,000 “bucket list” travel stipend, sustainable clothing company Cotopaxi invites employees on a camping trip every year to recharge from remote working and to make team bonding slightly more intense than doing icebreakers in the office kitchen.

Meat subscription co ButcherBox offers a company-wide mental health day in March, on the CEO’s mother’s birthday.

And our personal favorite? It kinda messes with the whole “level of jealousy” rating system, but our very own Morning Brew has a one-week company-wide summer break that lets us sign off without sneaking peeks at email.