Morning Brew - 🎂 Bday

The personal has become the professional, and vice versa. While working from home, it’s nearly as impossible to achieve work-life balance as it is to say “No” to a slice of birthday cake. In a recent survey by the Conference Board, 46% of respondents said their work-life balance has decreased since the beginning of the pandemic.  

Elizabeth Grace Saunders, time management coach and author of Divine Time Management and How to Invest Your Time Like Money, has a few strategies to reinforce your work-from-home boundaries across three areas: work, home, and personal needs. 

The best plan of attack is defining your boundaries via the time you start and the time you hit “Set yourself as away” on Slack (note: shouldn’t be 9pm). Saunders suggests asking yourself: “If I had to catch a train, how would I organize my day? How much time would I spend on certain items? What would I say yes and no to?”

Once you answer those questions and decide what you want your day to look like, communicate that with your fam or SO. You might say, according to Saunders, “When I’m in the place where I work, I need you to wait to talk to me unless it’s an emergency.” Or “If this is a five-minute conversation, we can talk right away; if it’s an hour-long conversation, let’s talk once I’m off.”

You can put your work computer away, turn on “Do Not Disturb,” or time-block your day in GCal, but Saunders says it comes down to being honest with yourself about how you want to spend your time, what distracts you, and what drives you. 

• Earth Day is this Thursday! Mark your calendars for 5:30pm EST that day, ’cause I’m going live on the Sidekick Instagram with Mimi Ausland, founder of Free The Ocean. 
• The best way to cook hard-boiled eggs is not what you’d expect. 
• A database of old book illustrations. It’s like an image-only version of your 6th grade social studies textbook about the Middle Ages. 
• Last week’s “I Know a Spot” newsletter was dedicated to homes outside a literal box. Imagine having to walk across a skybridge to get from room to room.  
• Financial anxiety...I know her. Here are a few ways to cope with it. 
• Even without a vaccine passport, you can still tour the Pyramids. 
• A very spring-forward dish: asparagus galette. 

We’re all born with the gift of curiosity. We bombard our parents with “Why?” questions. We dress up and act like astronauts, chefs, and fashion designers. But then, we lose that sense of wonder. RIP. 

On a recent episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Walter Isaacson, author, journalist, and professor, shared how he—as an adult—views the world through the lens of curiosity. You may know Isaacson from his 656-page biography of Steve Jobs, which inspired the eponymous film. But Isaacson has studied and written about many other successful leaders and creators: Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and most recently, scientist Jennifer Doudna. 

After embarking on these “journeys of discovery” (as he calls them), Isaacson learned that the common thread between creative thinkers is a natural curiosity. So, how can we all cultivate that? 

The simplest way: Ask questions. Brian Grazer, Oscar-winning producer, is on the same page. He started having what he calls “curiosity conversations:” casual chats with people he was just curious about, including people outside the movie industry. He wrote a whole book on it. 

To vapour infuse or not to vapour infuse? That is the ques-gin.

And the answer, of course, is to vapour infuse. Bombay Sapphire uses steam to extract the flavors of its all-natural and sustainably sourced botanicals. 

It’s the reason why you immediately say, “Oh wow, that was an incredibly vibrant and well-balanced sip of gin,” after every sip of Bombay.

So if you’re looking to have a G&T where the G stands for Great and the T stands for Taste, look to the vapour-infused deliciousness of Bombay Sapphire.

Grab a bottle of unques-gin-ably good gin here.

• I’ve been phasing out my average Joe cleaning products for more sustainable ones, and now I’m a big fan of Dropps’s lemon dishwasher pods. They clean just as well as (if not better than) any other pod I’ve used—load, throw one in, and you’re good to go. There’s no chemical smell. In fact, the lemon scent is quite refreshing and not overbearing.
• Pockitudes are cute lil gratitude journals on the go. A three-pack holds 51 days’ worth of prompts for gratitude, acts of kindness, and reflection. Plus, 5% of gross sales go to mental health nonprofits. 
• I’m a sucker for all things tableware, and if you’re in the market for new glassware, check out Rigby Home’s short drinking glass set. Everything is hand-blown in a small factory in Portugal, so no two glasses are the same. And they’re dishwasher-safe.