Welcome to The New Corner Office

In this era of social distancing, many people are working from home for the first time. Jobs in general are becoming more flexible in terms of hours and location. In The New Corner Office podcast, host Laura Vanderkam shares strategies for thriving in this new and more self-directed world of work. Each episode — released each weekday morning — features a quick tip or an answer to a listener question. The goal is to help listeners succeed in the modern workplace, where ideas matter more than ever, but shoes might be optional. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office.
This is the podcast where we discuss strategies for thriving
in the new world of work, one where location and
ours are less fixed than in the past. Whether you
are employed by an organization that is experimenting with remote work,
or you're an entrepreneur running your business from your kitchen table,

(00:28):
or something in between, this show is for you. In
future episodes, I'll share tips for getting more done, for
advancing your career, for managing relationships with colleagues, for feeling
better about time in general. But today I want to
introduce myself and explain why I decided to create the show.

(00:49):
I have a number of different professional identities. I write
books on time management, such as A hundred sixty eight
Hours and Off the Clock. I speak about the topic too.
I host the every weekday morning podcast Before Breakfast, and
I co host a weekly one with Dr Sarah hart
Unger called Best of Both Worlds Important for this podcast.

(01:10):
I run these businesses out of my home office. I
first began working from home regularly in two thousand two.
I wasn't a corporate type then, looking to achieve work
life balance. I was twenty three and single. I had
just moved to New York City with the hope of
landing some sort of media job. While I was looking,
I began freelancing for various publications. I soon learned that

(01:34):
if I hustled, I could earn more money from the
comfort of my kitchen table than I could while commuting.
So that is what I've been doing ever since. In
the meantime, the work life balance aspects of working from
home have definitely become more important to me. I met
my husband in New York City and we had two
kids there. Then we moved to Pennsylvania and had three more.

(01:56):
I have valued being able to meet the school bus,
though I also want to be clear that I've usually
had childcare while working from home. I know that with
the current social distancing restrictions in place as the world
battles the new coronavirus, many people who are working from
home for the first time do not have that luxury.
We'll talk about all these things aside from the current crisis.

(02:18):
The number of people working outside traditional offices has grown
in recent decades. Companies have started to advertise fully remote positions,
which has been great for all sorts of people. Who
haven't gotten a fair shake in the traditional labor market,
such as military spouses who move frequently. Many managers are
willing to consider a work from home day or two

(02:39):
per week for knowledge jobs as a way to keep
good employees, and a few organizations are fully remote with
no central headquarters, which is a great way for small
businesses to tap talent that they might not otherwise get.
This was all going up, and then the world went
into lockdown. I know that many people have started working

(02:59):
from home out of necessity. We are definitely the lucky
ones who can do so, as other workers see layoffs
or hours cut. But when we are on the other
side of this, as eventually we will be, the world
of work will have changed. That position that a manager
insisted could not be done remotely, it can be done remotely.

(03:23):
That meeting you thought could have been an email, well
it really could have been an email. Clients service will change,
gatherings will change, routine medical visits are moving to telemedicine.
Homeschooling may become more common as millions of folks try
it out out of necessity and some discover that it
has upsides. I wanted to start this podcast to talk

(03:44):
about these trends, but also primarily to share strategies for
how we could thrive in this new world. How can
we get stuff done? How can we build our careers?
How can we be top of mind when we're not
necessarily face to face. I've got some tips from years
of studying how people spend their time and from studying

(04:05):
organizations that work well in this new world. I also
want to share your tips. You can email me at
Laura at Laura Vanderkam dot com. How are you succeeding
in the new corner office, which might just be a
corner of your dining room table. What hard lessons have
you learned? And how can you help others? The world

(04:27):
looks bleak right now, but this is going to be
a podcast about the changes that will happen as a result.
I wish the circumstances were different, but I'm excited about
starting on the journey nonetheless, So in the meantime, this
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding in

(04:47):
the New Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your favorite shows mmmm