Laura Vanderkam - The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home

On Thursday, March 12, 2020, my twelve-year-old rose at 6:45 A.M. to get ready for his 7:20 A.M. choir practice. My husband got ready for work, drove our son to his middle school, then hopped on a train. I read outside for a few minutes before supervising the morning routines for our other four children. At about 9:00 A.M. , with everyone at school or in our nannys capable hands, I settled into my home office as I usually doa nice spot on the northwest corner of my house in eastern Pennsylvania where I could watch the forsythia bloom through the window. I worked on my podcast and writing projects, but the news was darkening quickly. Cases of the novel coronavirus that had been making headlines were popping up around the United States. That afternoon, the governor ordered the kids schools closed for what would turn out to be the rest of the term. By the time my husband got off the train, he had, along with millions of people, become a full-time virtual worker like me, moving from an office downtown to a new corner officehis on the southeast side of the house.

I study time for a living. In normal times, my business involves speaking to corporate or conference audiences about productivity, and writing books based on my analysis of thousands of time logs. I know, from studying such logs over the past dozen years, that working from home has become more common. This is true both for employees and for the self-employed. A study by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found a 159 percent increase in remote work from 2005 to 2017, though with blurring boundaries between work and home these statistics are hard to pin down. Anybody who checks work email from her bed at 10:00 P.M. is technically working from home, even if she wouldnt define it that way herself.

But before March 2020, working from home during business hours was still perceived as a questionable choice for anyone with big ambitions. Corporate work-from-home privileges were doled out mostly as a once-a-week perk for people who needed a better work/life balance and whod proven themselves trustworthy. Even then, such a concession was usually reserved for Fridays. Everyone knows that Fridays are the least productive day of the week. The assumption was that anyone working from home wasnt working, so best to minimize the opportunity cost. Sure, video conferencing had improved since the clunky webinars of the past. Organizations occasionally lamented the environmental costs of commuting (right before shipping their CEOs to Davos on a private jet). Still, with many managers assuming that work had to happen at set times in an office buildingwith the temperature locked at a frigid 68 degreesmillions of people braved traffic just to email and call people in other places. I remember one conversation with a business leader who was exploring remote work as a trend his organization needed to be aware ofbut, he noted, it would never work for us.

Then the COVID-19 epidemic swept through the United States and Europe. In the space of days, people learned that their entire organizations could operate remotely (including that business leaders). Gallup polls found that, as of March 1315, 2020, only 31 percent of U.S. workers had ever worked remotely; by March 30April 2, 2020, this had doubled to 62 percent.

Forced to figure it out, people learned that you could, in fact, pitch a million-dollar project to a client via Zoom. Many routine medical visits could be handled via telemedicine, raising the question of why people had wasted hours sitting in germ-filled waiting rooms. You could work closelylaughing, sharing momentswith people who werent in the same state. People suddenly juggling work and homeschooling or childcare figured out that, while it wasnt easy by any means, with careful planning they could work at varying hours and still get some stuff done. If a proposal cant be written on Tuesday at 10:00 A.M. , maybe it can be written on Tuesday at 6:00 A.M. , then presented while a partner covers, and toasted during nap time.

As daily life slowly clawed back toward normal, few could argue that remote and flexible work would never work for us. It has.

People always revert to old habits. The first post-quarantine trip to a coffee shop? Its a celebration of human interaction. On the second, people avoid eye contact with the barista as usual. But some things do change. Maybe you are among the millions who worked from home for the first time during COVID-19. Maybe you cannot fathom strapping yourself back into your car to burn ten hours each week commuting. Maybe you used to spend your weekdays visiting client headquarters, but now your clients dont want to battle traffic either. In April, Gallup found that 59 percent of those working from home during the pandemic wanted to keep doing so afterward. Maybe you want to explore new ways of workingways that are more self-directed and where location and hours are less set than before.

If so, this book is for you.

Its also for you if youve been running your own small firm (as I do) or managing a distributed team for years. Its for anyone who wants to take the opportunity that a great upheaval provides to rethink time and life. Having seen what is possible, the smartest leaders are recognizing that structuring work to be more flexible in terms of time and place isnt about work/life balance. The wisest professionals are recognizing that remote and flexible work styles can be huge strategic advantages for those bold enough to seize them. Organizations are more nimble; people are happier and healthier. Working face-to-face is great, but like everything, there is a point of diminishing returns. For many kinds of work, this point is far below the previous expectation of forty set hours a week in a cubicle. In the new corner office, results matter more than where and when work happens.

This book shares strategies from highly successful people who are thriving in this new world. Well talk about:

Managing by task, not time. Time is an incredibly useful concept, but structuring work differently allows for efficiency breakthroughs.

Getting the rhythm right. A well-planned workday ensures challenging but sustainable progress.