Thriving in “The New Corner Office” (e-book by Laura Vanderkam)
Remote working is not new to me. Yet the pandemic did throw me off my routine. Regardless, I am always open to new strategies to be more effective when working from home, especially with fitting in personal priorities. I am happy that last month I did something different. I bought my first e-book. It was The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home by Laura Vanderkam.
From Productivity to Well-Being
Naturally, I was expecting productivity tips on how to succeed when working from a home office. Vanderkam does deliver in this area, such as by writing that we should manage by task (not time) and sharing how to effectively create and implement to-do lists.
In addition to many other areas, Vanderkam discusses how to build relationships remotely among teammates; has us re-think whether “daily 9:00 A.M. virtual check-ins” are an optimal use of our time; and provides tips on shining as a thought leader and authentically advancing our personal brand.
I was not expecting the book to end with a chapter on “Optimizing Well-Being”. The section “Have Little Adventures” resonated with me a lot. The increased line blur between work, home, and personal life from the impact of the pandemic was making me feel like I was losing myself as a person again (similar to when I was practising law and needed to step away). Little did I know that the purchase of Vanderkam’s recently released e-book was a little adventure I had created for myself to optimize well-being.
In this last chapter, Vanderkam writes:
The admonition of “where did the time go?” is really a statement that we don’t remember where the time went. Make life memorable and you won’t have this problem.
Joy and Adventure as a To-Do
That question of “where did the time go?” made me think of Vanderkam’s book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. During the tail-end of my law practice days, I recall seizing her suggestion of using “bits of time for bits of joy”, which is doing something meaningful to you using the bits of free time in between things. It really helped me with answering questions like “what did you do this weekend?”. Apart from responding with “I worked”, often I would not even remember. By documenting those bits of joy memories through photographs, I had proof that I did have time for myself. By committing to share those moments on social media on a regular basis, I was making sure that time was there for me.
In The New Corner Office, Vanderkam directs us to “aim to have at least one little adventure each day” to force our brain to pay attention:
This is how today is different from other days. Such novelty makes life more memorable. Since it turns out that the density of memories affects our perception of how much time has passed (which explains why the first day of vacation somewhere exotic feels very long), this means adventures can stretch the experience of time.
Vanderkam suggests brainstorming “a handful of micro-adventures” to make life memorable. Some of the examples she provides as little adventures to put into our daily to-do list include running on a trail, organizing a family scavenger hunt, and cooking a new recipe on the same night as a friend so we can compare notes over a video chat.
I really like the idea of having little adventures and needed this well-being reminder to allocate time to do something memorable, something meaningful to me. The beauty of Vanderkam’s suggestion is that if we share our little adventures (or spark an adventure to-do) during our conversations with clients, on a team video chat, or on social media, we can come across a little more human and feel a little more human ourselves.
Now that is productive: nurturing our relationships and ourselves. So what will be on your bucket list of little adventures this week?
