As we talk about in this week’s episode, Sarah just launched a new podcast called Best Laid Plans. She covers all things planners and planning, reviews the various products out there, interviews guests, and discusses the planning methods that help her manage her job, her family, her serious workouts, her blog, and, of course, her two podcasts! So please go subscribe to Best Laid Plans, and then leave Sarah a review over at Apple podcasts.

We devote the rest of the episode to more listener questions. Topics include home work stations, pandemic-related habits, questions about moving with kids, and our favorite non-screen activities for children. Please give it a listen!

My answer is the same now as it was pre-Covid. Long term, if you have young kids, and want to work from home effectively, you cannot be the adult in charge during the hours you choose to work. That is much more complicated now with many schools not providing during-the-day coverage. But it is still true.

That said, you don’t have to go the full-time nanny route. The other adult in charge can be your partner, even if your partner works too. These days, a lot more people are working from home than in the past. If you and your partner are both working from home for the next few months, and have relatively flexible jobs (or at least enough autonomy not to get fired for setting your own hours), you can each get 30 mostly focused hours to work each week through swapping coverage — mostly within the standard business day. If you are facing down a fall of coupling videoconferences and kid Zoom tech support, here’s a schedule that might work.

First, we assume that any young kids who are home nap from 1-3 p.m. or so, and older children could do screen time or independent reading/work during this time. One party is still “on” during this window to deal with disruptions, but will probably be able to work. The party covering up until 1 p.m. is responsible for starting this nap/quiet time. (This schedule doesn’t really build in transitions — I assume the adults just pass the baton quickly.)

Second, we assume that the party in charge not only keeps the kids safe, he/she keeps the kids out of the other person’s home office during this time. This is key. Work hours need to be work hours. This is an active job. Party A cannot wander off to do yard work, leaving Party B to deal with a kid banging on the door to announce that the laptop has frozen up.

Anyway, during half the weeks, party A works from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. window is “pure” focused time; the 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. window is probable time (when Party A is “on” but this is understood to be screen/nap time). Party A also works from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

Party B works the opposite hours: 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday (with 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. being focused hours, and 1-3 p.m. being probable hours).

During half the weeks, the parties flip the Friday schedule, so party B works from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays and party A works 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

If you add this up, each person has 29 available hours on one week of the schedule, and 31 hours on another. In each week, 25 hours feature sure coverage, and 4-6 hours are nap/quiet time. Each party can do some morning calls and some afternoon engagements.

Now, of course, the caveats. Both parties have to be committed to this schedule and to mostly limiting work to the covered hours. This means they’ll probably need to share this schedule with team members and do the work of extricating themselves from non-covered stuff. A quick email check is one thing, but trying to slip in a videoconference is another thing entirely. If the kids mostly have morning virtual schooling, both parties need to be capable of managing it. There can be the occasional swap. If you are pitching a multi-million dollar project to a new client who can only meet at a certain time, you can ask for a “sub” credit. If sub credits become a daily or even weekly thing, though, the system will break down.

On the other hand, 30 working hours without paid childcare isn’t bad at all — especially since these are all “normal” hours. No 5 a.m. sessions required! A couple who needed to work more could investigate morning/evening/weekend swaps (each party works from 6-10 p.m. one night a week, for instance, or from 6-10 a.m. on weekend mornings). You could also potentially do this swap schedule with a neighbor or relative with whom you could share care, though I imagine spouses would be the most common iteration.

In any case, while this schedule isn’t ideal, it is probably the most equitable way to cope with the next few months if another childcare situation isn’t possible. If those 30 work hours are planned well, they can go a long way.

Does your work-from-home schedule look anything like this?

In other news: I am doing a webinar on working from home with the Independent Women’s Forum on Tuesday from 1-2 p.m. eastern. You can register here.

But doing the same thing over and over again tends to lead to the same results. And sometimes that can lead to the feeling of being stuck in a rut.

As I am doing interviews about The New Corner Office, one frequent question I get is about how remote workers can think big about their careers. In the absence of copious face time (a stupid proxy for ambition in any case) how can work-from-home types land new opportunities and take their careers to the next level?

One idea: Start a speculative project. Often, these can generate a lot of movement in the universe, leading to new opportunities.

In my world (non fiction book writing) such projects happen all the time. People try a new habit each week, or send dozens of thank you notes, or try not to throw anything away for a year…and then write about it.

Not everyone is aiming for a book deal. And “stunt journalism” is probably past its peak. But many people would like a better network, new job leads, or to get more visibility within an organization.

There are plenty of speculative projects that might help here too. What happens if you do a double opt-in introduction every day for two months? What happens if you grab coffee (virtual or in-person) with a new person each Friday? What happens if you film yourself giving humorous answers to your company’s most frequently asked IT questions? What happens if you commit to meeting with four mentees weekly for a year?

I have no idea. But this much activity tends to lead to something. And sometimes that something can give your career quite a boost. And maybe lead to some new friendships too. It takes time, but probably not a tremendous amount of time. So it might be worth a shot.

In other news: Speaking of projects! My Best of Both Worlds co-host, Sarah Hart-Unger, just launched a new podcast called Best Laid Plans. This show covers all things planners and planning. I’m really looking forward to adding this to my listening rotation!

Photo: You never know what’s over the horizon…

He’s a very social little fellow. He loves to sit at the table during family dinners which, because of the coronavirus, we’re having almost every night. He’s got big smiles for all his siblings. He likes to nap in the Ergo carrier on Daddy’s chest. But he’s still very much a mama’s boy, keeping his eyes on me whenever he can.

He is growing magnificently, with some amazingly chubby legs. Supplying the round-the-clock milk necessary to make this possible is making me…hungry. But the upside of never going anywhere is that it’s been pretty easy to keep my milk supply up. He will sometimes take a cup. He tolerates some oat cereal, sweet potatoes. And he nurses with gusto.

Sleep is just a struggle. I probably should sleep train him, but that takes energy, which is in short supply by 9 p.m. And, in my advanced maternal age, I’m kind of a softie.

Anyway, he has been such a wonderful addition to the family. The kids all love to hold him and play with him. He’s sitting up but not quite mobile yet. I know this is a short stage, so I’m trying to enjoy it!

Anyway, a lot of places are open here with timed tickets to manage capacity. This is introducing a new element of complexity, as getting 7 people out the door, including an infant, to hit a venue within a short window is…tough. On Saturday, I got us timed tickets to Longwood Gardens. My husband was supposed to do his run right before, but got stuck in traffic on the way back, so we were already not going to be early. Then we hit severe traffic on I-476. Then, about 5 minutes from the gardens, one of my kids yelled from the backseat “Hey, what’s that yellow stuff all over Henry?” Well, sure enough, there had been a massive diaper blow-out. All over him, his clothes, his seat…Fortunately, this is not my first rodeo, so I had a change of clothes, wipes, and paper towels in the car. But dealing with all this took time, which means we rushed into the gardens right at the very end of our ticket grace period.

But! The gardens were lovely. We got to see a quick fountain show, butterflies in the meadow, and lily pads in the conservatory.

On Sunday, I took the older three kids peach and blueberry picking. I have been feeling lately like my youngest two children are taking about 90 percent of my parenting capacity. So the goal was to spend some quality time with the older ones. We went to Indian Orchards in Media, PA, which was a small and quiet place (unlike some of the more circus like pick-your-own establishments). We left with a great many peaches, which are now ripening on the counter, and enough blueberries to keep us in blueberry muffins for a while. I wound up making these at 8 p.m. last night after we realized we were out of vegetable oil so the weekly grocery run had to happen first.

In other news: I’m doing a webinar/Q&A through the New York Public Library on Tuesday on The New Corner Office (the book). This is a virtual event, so anyone can register. Here’s the link!

The book launch went pretty well. If you’ve read The New Corner Office, I would appreciate your posting a review! Sarah and I recorded two episodes of Best of Both Worlds. I’ve been sneaking in times to record my solo podcasts while everyone is hanging out semi-quietly in the basement. I’m trying to revise a proposal for the next book. In the meantime, I’ve been attending a lot of softball games. I made my first trip to a grocery store in months last night (my husband tends to make the family trips, both because of the pandemic and because I have a bad tendency to underbuy). It was kind of fun to see what was there. I made the impulse purchase of one of those Talenti gelato layers pints. Peanut Butter vanilla fudge. I think I may need some more of it after last night.

I have some vague plan to take the big kids peach picking this weekend. I found one of my weekend game plans from early March the other day. Three adults driving four kids to different activities. It seems like an artifact from a former world.

I’ve gotten a few emails from people who are reading The New Corner Office with their colleagues who are also working from home. I have pulled together some discussion questions for anyone who’s got a virtual corporate book group going (which, by the way, is an excellent idea for doing something that’s both social and educational!). I’ll turn this into a PDF as well if you want to email me to get a copy.

Questions:

1. Working from home is a skill. What work-from-home skills have we gotten better at over the last few months? What practices could still use some improvement?

2. What parts of our former office life are important to replicate? Which would we prefer to change up?

3. What constitutes a good, productive day? How do each of us decide what goes on each day’s priority list?

4. How do we plan meetings? How could we plan and conduct them better? What could we do to have fewer meetings? Did any recent meetings go really well? Why?

5. What are our expectations about response times for emails? Instant messages? Calls? What about for messages sent outside of business hours? Do we have quiet hours and interactive hours?

6. How do we begin our days? How do we know when they are done?

7. Talk through the rhythm of a good day. What kind of work would each of us do when? When would we take breaks? What kind of breaks?

8. When and how are we most likely to get distracted? How do we deal with these distractions — or prevent them from happening in the first place? (There could be a side discussion here for colleagues with children or other caregiving responsibilities about how they are managing coverage these days.)

9. A book group is a great way to encourage social engagement! What are some other activities that have helped us feel connected to our colleagues? When do we feel most disconnected, and what could we do to change this?

10. Long term, what do we see as the right balance between time spent working at home, and time spent working at the office?

11. What activities would we like to spend more time doing, personally and professionally? If each of us were going to devote one extra hour a week to a personal priority and a professional priority, what would those be?

12. What little adventures have each of us been able to put into daily life during quarantine? What else could we try to make the days stand apart from each other?

Then, in March, the Covid-19 pandemic swept through the US and Europe. Whole organizations went virtual overnight. While some work cannot be done remotely, and we’re learning that some work is really hard to do well remotely (I’m thinking elementary education), much general information work can. I do hope life will go back to normal. But I’m betting that remote work will remain a bigger part of the picture, with a lot of people working from home 2-3 days per week and the office 2-3 days per week in order to get…the best of both worlds.

In this episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I talked about some common work-from-home issues, with tips from my new ebook, The New Corner Office (also the name of one of my other podcasts). We cover Zoom fatigue, distractions, and how to cope with limited childcare. I have to admit that when my agent, my publisher, and I discussed doing this quick-turnaround book in April, and then I learned that “quick” meant July, part of me thought…hmm…will that be too late? But here we are. This “future trend” is upon us, and I’m guessing will be for a while.

Please give the episode a listen! And I’d appreciate if you’d consider getting a copy of the ebook. If you read it, please write a review, and then let me know so I can thank you!

The temperatures hit the mid-90s both days this weekend, and I spent quite a bit of time outside. A big strategy: running early. Jane and I ran 8.2 miles on Saturday morning, starting at 7 a.m. It was not easy but the heat wasn’t so much the reason. I am just…out of shape.

We stayed in the shade a lot too. I got timed tickets for the zoo on Sunday morning and we’d always find a little shady patch from which to view the animals. I spent a lot of time hanging out on my covered porch. Water helps. I took kids in the pool both days around 3 p.m., after avoiding being outside from about noon until then. We went on an evening walk with my parents on Sunday, and even though the thermometer read 90, as the sun was starting to go down a nice breeze had kicked up, and it felt fairly…good. (And pretty! See the photo on this post.)

Now, granted, this is Pennsylvania (or New Jersey in the case of the walk). The humidity wasn’t so terrible, and 90 is about as hot as it gets here. Still, it was nice to realize that my resolution to get outside for at least 20 minutes a day can be pleasant even in the hottest part of summer. If in winter it’s all about the gear, in summer it’s often about the timing. It’s the rare night that sitting outside on the porch at 8:30 p.m. with a glass of wine won’t be lovely.

In other news: The New Corner Office ebook launches tomorrow. Please check it out! If you read it, please consider writing a review…and then letting me know so I can thank you.

My Medium column on how to come up with great ideas ran last week. The best practice? Do something effortless and habitual, so your brain is a little occupied (to beat boredom) but not so stimulated that you don’t think. This is why driving and showering seem so fruitful.