Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the new corner office. The podcast where we share

strategies for succeeding in the new world of work, where location and hours are more flexible

than in the past. Today's tip is to just try it out. Lots of us are attempting to do

life in different ways right now. Not everything will work. That's fine. Having an experimental

mindset serves us well. Now and when life is more normal too. Like many people listening

to this podcast, I've spent the past few weeks becoming more familiar with Zoom than

I ever thought possible. Since I run my own business out of a home office, I've long

had a Zoom Pro account, but I used it once or twice a week and only on my main laptop

and only for work. But over the past few weeks, I've been amazed at how many types of

virtual interaction people have attempted. The first creative option we tried was a virtual

music lesson. My kid's music teacher had me set up the laptop right behind the piano

so we could watch the keys and the music. We tried virtual karate, with the instructors

showing moves and the kids repeating them. My kids are all doing morning meetings with

their teachers. My five year old sits on my lap to have preschool virtual circle time.

He tried movement and music class this way and my choir has even been meeting together

virtually. Now for people familiar with Zoom, he might recognize a potential problem with

the last one. It's hard to listen to more than one voice at a time. When we try singing

songs at preschool circle time, we sound disjointed, but no one expects anything else from

preschool circle time. With a choir, well that's a different matter. But our conductor

sends us sheet music, meets us all and plays the piano while we each sing our own parts.

We can't hear each other, but we're still singing together. I've loved seeing pictures

on social media of virtual happy hours. Some personal trainers have told me they're doing

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