This is an I-Heart podcast.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the new corner office, the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the new

world of work, where location and hours are more flexible than in the past.

Today's tip is to embrace your weekends. Yes, even now. Make Saturday different from Tuesday.

Even if you spend your time in the same place on Saturdays and Tuesdays, you don't need to

spend your time in the same way. There's a great scene

in the TV series Downton Abbey when a young lawyer offers that he can visit on the weekends. An aristocratic

older lady asks, what is a weekend? With a life of leisure, the day of the week makes no difference to

her. If every day is defined by pleasure and relaxation, then your life might

as well be a series of Saturdays. But if you're listening to this podcast and aiming to maximize

your productivity, my guess is that in normal times, you are keenly aware of weekdays and you get a lot

of good work done. In normal times, you would never mistake a Sunday for a Wednesday. But these are not normal

times. For many people, it's become hard to distinguish the days from each other. Now, this might not

be the case if you've got kids home with you who are thrilled to get two days off from their Zoom

classes. But if it's just you, or mostly adults in your household, it's easy to find yourself working

on Saturday and Sunday as if they were no different from the Thursday and Friday you just

worked your way through.

Now, I will never tell people not to work on a weekend.

If you don't have a religious prohibition against it, there's nothing inherently wrong with

catching up on some tasks on a

Saturday or, as I'm doing right now, writing podcast scripts at 7 a.m. on Sunday. But for most people

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