The New Corner Office by Laura Vanderkam - Productivity Book Group

The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home by Laura Vanderkam – Productivity Book Group

The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home [ https://amzn.to/3otqx9z ] by Laura Vanderkam.

Dr. Frank Buck, the author of Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders https://amzn.to/2V2H8RL ], and regular speaker on time management, joins me as usual to co-host this summary-review episode on Productivity Book Group.

About the Author (from Amazon)

Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and 168 Hours.

Her 2016 TED talk, “How to Gain Control of Your Free Time,” has been viewed more than 5 million times. She regularly appears in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Fortune. She is the co-host, with Sarah Hart-Unger, of the podcast Best of Both Worlds.

She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and four children, and blogs at LauraVanderkam.com.

About the Book (from the book cover)

Drawing on her 18 years of experience working remotely, plus original interviews with managers, employees, and free agents who’ve perfected their remote routines, Laura Vanderkam shares strategies for productivity, creativity, and health in the new corner office.

How do you do great work while sitting near the same spot where you watch Netflix? How can you be responsive without losing the focus necessary for getting things done? How can you maintain and grow your network when you spend less time face to face?

The key is to detach yourself from old ways of working and adopt new habits to match your new environment. Long before public health concerns pushed many of us indoors, some of the most successful people fueled their careers with carefully perfected work-from-home routines. Drawing on those profiles and her own insights, productivity expert and mother of five Laura Vanderkam reveals how to turn “being cooped up” into the ultimate career advantage. Her hacks include:

  Manage by task, not time. Going to an office for 8 hours makes you feel like you’ve done something, even if you haven’t. Remote workers should set 3-5 ambitious goals for each day and consider the work day done when these are crossed off.
  Get the rhythm right. A well-planned day features time for focused work, interactive work, and rejuvenating breaks. In place of a commute, a consciously chosen shut down ritual keeps work from continuing all night.
  Nurture connections. Wise remote workers can build broader and more effective networks than people sitting in the same cubicle five days a week.

Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, a self-starter or someone who prefers detailed directions, you can do your clearest thinking and deepest work at home–and have more energy left over to achieve personal goals or fuel bigger professional ambitions. In fact, soon you might find it hard to imagine working any other way.

Our next reading selections

Essentialism: The Disciplines Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
December 16, 2020 at noon Eastern

Show Notes/Quotations

(Please listen to understand the context of the resources provided. If we missed something, please comment on the episode and let us know!)

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Thanks again to Dr. Frank Buck for joining me here on Productivity Book Group.

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Please visit ProductivityBookGroup.org and find out the details and the schedule for upcoming book discussion calls; check out the schedule on the “Upcoming Books” page.

Please feel free to visit iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music Podcasts, or whichever podcast directory or app you prefer to access Productivity Book Group…and feel free to review us there! This helps expand our readership and bring new discussion callers into the fold. Thank you.

Finally, all podcast episodes are archived at ProductivityBookGroup.org under “Episodes” so if you missed a call and want to review it, feel free to head over and give them a listen.

And with that, thanks, everyone for listening to Productivity Book Group.

I’m Ray Sidney-Smith. Here’s to your productive life!


Note: All registered service marks, trademarks and other copyrighted materials mentioned on the podcast are that of their respective owners. This group is not affiliated with or officially endorsed by those copyright owners.

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