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 reschedule things well. Handled well, you might free up space

in your schedule and make others happy to. I'll start this episode by saying that I really dislike rescheduling things.

In general, I like to figure out before I commit to something whether I am actually going to do it.

I assume that other people have busy lives as well, and they are no doubt doing difficult things

to make our original time work.

Keeping the commitment is really about being respectful.

So I almost never ask to reschedule things.

But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes welcome a little more breathing room.

I recently got an email from someone asking me to reschedule

a virtual discussion that was supposed to happen in a few days. She explained the situation and said

that she was happy to keep the current time if it was best for me. But if I was open to another time,

she would welcome the opportunity to move it. I loved that framing. The note was so

respectful of my time, and that it honored the commitment we made. She was only going to move the

time if I was neutral, or if the new time worked better. As it turned out, the original week

was getting pretty crowded for me too,

so I was quite happy to move the event to a different time. But I felt so much better about the

situation than some of the last minute emails I've gotten from people over the years just

announcing, going to have to move this, and not for really serious emergencies or anything along those

lines. Often, it's just too much other stuff going on.

...