Name: The New Corner Office
Rating: 4.1 (265 reviews)
Author: Laura Vanderkam

What’s in it for me? A rundown of remote work strategies.

Working from home sounds like a dream. There’s no commute, you’ve got snacks at hand, and you don’t have to face any chatty colleagues. But all that freedom comes with additional responsibility. Some even struggle to remain productive.

Luckily, The New Corner Office is here to help. To assemble this practical guide to remote work, time management expert Laura Vanderkam drew on her two decades’ experience researching professional success, as well as countless interviews with managers, employees, and freelancers around the world.

The result? A simple set of tried-and-tested strategies for remaining productive, creative, and happy while working remotely. The sensible recommendations found in this book-in-blinks will help you stay on task, stick to your routines, and accomplish your goals – all without succumbing to cabin fever.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what puppies can teach us about work;
how to make a digital happy hour; and
why you should always pick a room with a view.

When working from home, think in terms of tasks, not time.

It’s no secret that puppies love to play. But can they also teach us about work? For Meredith Schwartz, CEO of the wedding planning company Here Comes the Guide, the answer was a resounding yes.

When Schwartz got her first puppy, she decided to spend a few weeks working from home as the new pet settled in. At first, she worried that she wouldn’t be productive while away from the office. However, she found the opposite to be true. She got more done.

In fact, the experiment was such a success that she slowly shifted her entire company to remote work. Now, her team works from home. So how do they stay effective? Well, they focus on completing tasks, not putting in hours.

The key message here is: When working from home, think in terms of tasks, not time.

The traditional workday asks us to toil from nine to five, 40 hours a week. Often, however, those hours don’t correlate with any outcomes. After all, we’ve all spent days sitting at a desk doing nothing, merely because it’s expected. Manage your day more effectively by ditching the time sheets and instead evaluating your performance based on what you actually do.

A good way to reorient your work around productivity, not time, is to draw up a list of tasks for each week. Every Friday, take a moment to write down what you would like to get done the following week. This should include discrete duties that can be done in a day as well as milestones to meet on longer-term projects. If you manage employees, you can create accountability by having your workers submit their lists to you each week as well.

Once you have your agenda, forget about hours. Each day, just focus on crossing items off the list. Some days, you’ll meet your goal early. Don’t fret – you can always work on tomorrow’s tasks. But remember, there’s nothing wrong with quitting at noon if you’re getting everything done. When working from home, you’re in charge of your schedule, and knowing when to stop is just as important as knowing when to start.

At the end of each day, complement your to-do list with a “to-done” list. This is a record of everything you accomplished each day, whether it was on your original agenda or not. Keeping tabs on your progress helps refine your time management for the next week.

Find a daily schedule that resonates with your work.

Let’s take a trip to a monastery. Here, devout monks diligently go about their days in calm harmony. They rise at dawn for lauds, keep occupied with chores in the afternoon, and wind down in the evening with vespers. And they do it all without their abbott micromanaging the process.

Now, you don’t need to take holy vows to have such focus and discipline. However, as these monks show, there’s certainly a virtue in keeping your schedule stable and predictable. While remote work lets us abandon the rigid schedule of the office, it’s still smart to structure your day with the right rhythm.

You can still foster close relationships while working remotely.

Have a listen to the Best of Both Worlds podcast. The hosts, Sarah and Laura, banter, quip, and chat like old friends. The rapport is so warm and fluid you’d never guess that the two people on the mics are hardly ever in the same room. In reality, they’ve only met in person a few times.

Still, even separated by thousands of miles, the hosts have built a strong friendship through consistent virtual communication. Between recording sessions, the pair are constantly texting, emailing, and having chummy video check-ins.

Achieve your potential by always seeking new challenges. 

When you’re working for a traditional company downtown, it’s easy to spot the superstar professionals. Usually, they’ve got a big corner office on the top floor and a personal secretary, and they saunter around in expensive designer suits.

When you work from home, professional success may look completely different. That C-suite office could be a corner of your living room, and that power suit might just be a pair of sweatpants. Without the typical status symbols guiding your rise, the outlines of an ambitious career path are a bit more ambiguous.

Optimize your working experience by creating a comfortable environment.

By now, you might suspect that remote workers are a little more satisfied with their setup than their commuting counterparts. But just how much happier are people who work from home? As it turns out, there are stats on that.

One survey from TINYpulse, a firm that studies employee engagement, found that remote workers score an average of 8.1 on a ten-point happiness scale. Other workers average closer to 7.5. Moreover, other studies show remote workers take fewer sick days and can actually put in more hours a week without burning out.

Kernaussagen in The New Corner Office