Dry January: lasted until finally arriving home after commuting in traffic

Random acts of kindness: lasted until a coworker ate my *labeled* lunch in the fridge

Gym sessions before work: lol never started

Welcome to mid-January, where New Year’s resolutions have lost their luster and the only energized things in your life are your staticky sweaters. But even disillusioned realists can still start the year off on a good note.

Here are nine easy-to-manage ways to set yourself up for success without wearing you out.

How you work:

Declutter your Slack by archiving an unused channel (RIP #content-logistics) or leaving a chat you never contribute to.

Restart your computer this afternoon, to avoid the dreaded “Your device will auto-update in 10 minutes” message during a client call.

Plug your coworkers’ birthdays into your work calendar (ask HR if you don’t know the exact dates) so you can rack up brownie points throughout the year.

Where you work:

Buy. New. Tupperware.

Refill your MetroCard or E-ZPass with enough $$$ to get you through July.

Find a new restaurant, coffee shop, or bar near your office (or house) where you can reset after a tough meeting.

Who you work with:

Review the roster for your personal board of directors. Is there anyone you want to add? Any swap outs?

Have a quick talk with your boss about a tweak or two that you’d like to make to your 1:1 meetings.

• For example, the Raise editors just added a new “calendar updates” row to our weekly 1:1 template.

Have coffee with a teammate and talk about non-work things.

January is already cold and dark and sad—so go easy on yourself with the resolutions. Check off a few of these, and then try consoling your friends who still haven’t re-downloaded TikTok.—CS

Last week, Microsoft announced it’s adding an AI button to its Windows keyboards, making it even easier to ask a robot to write your holiday thank-you notes.

• The button will be located to the right of the space bar, literally making Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant your right-hand man.

In the increasingly audacious AI space race, shifting around a few keys and arrows doesn’t seem all that innovative. But that’s before you consider this redesign is the biggest change to the PC keyboard since 1994.

While we can’t all reinvent the QWERTY wheel, sometimes coming up with innovative ideas is all about going back to the basics. Here are three steps you can take to get yourself and your team on the right path toward big innovation:

Embrace a beginner’s mindset. View your surroundings with fresh eyes and expose yourself to new ideas and experiences, like a traveler in a new country.

• Try going to a deli, coffee spot, or museum and taking in the whole experience—without the perspective of someone who’s done those things a thousand times.
• What do you notice that you hadn’t seen before? How can you apply this to Zoom meetings, coffee chats, or your sales workflow?

Engage relaxed attention. Often, insight comes when you’re not specifically focused on a task.

• Try going on a walk without any distractions (no phone!); you may get a flash of insight on a tough work problem.

Empathize with your end user. Come up with better solutions by understanding your customers’ needs and wants in real life. How do people actually use products or services?

• Try watching how things work IRL by sticking with something familiar, at least at first, like how customers go through the payment process at the grocery store.
• Do they struggle to unlock Apple Pay while their hands are full of bags? Do they shove their change into their pockets instead of putting it back in their wallets?
• Where can the process be improved, and how?

Creating the conditions for innovation can often feel like a lot of work, but sometimes the simplest Shift can generate the biggest Return. Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Control + z.

Dive deeper: Creative Confidence by IDEO’s David and Tom Kelley (they’re brothers) is a close look at design thinking and innovative product creation.

Tired: creating thousands of YouTube videos to see what sticks

Wired: trying to tap into what’s trending for other creators

Inspired: using open data to reach 100k+ eyeballs in 1.7% of the normal video output

Morning Brew has teamed up with Jamie Rawsthorne—creator of one of the fastest-growing YouTube channels in the UK and the expert behind channels like Codie Sanchez’s Contrarian Thinking—to release Jamie’s Triple C Methodology to the public for the first time ever.

Join us tomorrow for a FREE workshop on the three-step methodology to determine what content is going to grow your YouTube channel.

Sign up here.

While it’s tempting to reach for the flashy new business books as they drop, there’s something to be said for revisiting the classics.

Dive into these five business books that’ve been popular since before Kindle was even born.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936) may be the classic-est of the classic biz books. Read it if you want a refresher on how to empathize with others and understand how they tick.

Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras (1994) covers the successful habits of companies they’ve deemed “visionaries.” Consider picking this up if you’re a budding entrepreneur or interested in the strategies behind the most innovative companies of the ’90s.

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981) outlines the intense effort by Data General (one of the earliest computer cos) to build a next-gen computing machine—often at any cost. Read this if you want an epic story on the good, bad, and ugly of motivation.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White (1918) is a style guide that speaks for itself. If you’re writing in any capacity, keep this little book on your shelf at all times (though we recommend the most recent edition, published in 1999).

Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) by David Ogilvy, aka the “Father of Advertising,” is a master class on marketing. Advertising has obviously changed a lot since the early ’80s, but the book’s core messages still stand—although no word on what Ogilvy would think about the Duolingo owl on TikTok.