Laura Vanderkam's Blog

Today is the last day of April. It has been quite a month, with a lot of amazing adventures.

The month began for me in Kyoto, Japan. The day was rainy, but it was peak cherry blossom season and I took so many photos of those white blossoms against the gray sky. The next day my 16-year-old and I went e-biking in the beautiful Lake Biwa region. On the 3rd, we went to Universal Studios Japan, with Super Nintendo World being a real highlight. The next day we took a bullet train back to Tokyo, then d...

I have long been fascinated by families that homeschool while both parents are working. In the popular image, homeschooling involves a mom who is not in the paid workforce teaching her brood around the kitchen table. Some homeschooling families might look like that, but not all do. I think I am drawn to this topic because it shows the limits in how many people think about time — that homeschooling and work must be done at certain simultaneous times and are thus mutually exclusive. But time is bi...

We are back to having all seven of us under one roof again! (Albeit briefly.) On Saturday, my oldest took his last final and finished his freshman year at Northeastern. My husband picked him up shortly thereafter and they drove all the way back home, arriving shortly after midnight. He is off to a summer program in the UK in about 10 days so this is a brief interlude, though he’ll be back in July/August.

He’s had such a good first year — getting fantastic grades in hard classes (organic chemistr...

I just got back from a less-than-24-hours trip to NYC to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. I sang with what was then a brand new chorus from 2003-2011. It was a big part of my life. They are now celebrating 25 years (with an album release! Just look up YNYC on Spotify) and they had a party in Brooklyn.

It was so much fun. I traveled in with a friend from the choir who now lives in Philly. I took an uber to her office Thursday afternoon and then she drove us to our ...

I am knee deep in doing interviews about Big Time right now, but long-time readers might recall that I have a book deadline for the next book, Golden Hours, coming up in October. So I’m also working on that. As part of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about my weekday evenings and this “final frontier,” as it were, of trying to use time in ways I’m happy about.

I know that my evenings feel a lot more calm and relaxing now that my youngest kid is 6 (this probably started happening somewhere between...

I’m doing a lot of interviews lately for Big Time publicity. In a recent one, I was asked about the phenomenon of the “9-9-6” schedule. This is a work schedule from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week (M-F plus usually Saturday). This schedule was (as the story goes) used in some Chinese tech companies in the past, and was then outlawed there. But some AI/tech companies in the US picked it up as a way to try to move fast toward their universe-bending outcomes or whatever silliness they are saying.

Because time keeps passing, it’s hard to know where it really goes. People tell themselves various stories about time that are based on moment-by-moment impressions — not data. Since stressful or negative moments stand out in the mind more than positive ones, these stories are often stressful or negative too.

But when you track your time, you see that these stories are often incomplete. In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I talk about time stories, and how changing the story can...

Sunday was rainy and cool, but Friday and Saturday were lovely spring days. I had kept Friday fairly open and was able to do some fun things with it — a walk with a friend, and a massage in the afternoon. I also blocked off a window at 1 p.m. for buying 2028 Olympics tickets. It felt a little silly but I did get tickets to some track and field events. For July 2028! I have no idea what life will look like then but probably I will be around and probably it will be fun to do. Now I just need to ma...

I entered the system for buying tickets for the LA ’28 Olympics, and my slot is today. I’ve been told there aren’t many things left so we shall see. It’s hard to think about life two years in the future. A year we can see reasonably clearly. Past that…not so much.

The weather has been gorgeous this week and so many flowers are out. The tulips are blooming. I went to Longwood last weekend, and this Wednesday over my “lunch break” I went to Chanticleer. This lovely little garden is about 20 minute...

First, the big news around here: my Kwanzan cherry trees are blooming! I’d been watching the progression of the buds since coming back from Japan. Over the weekend a few blossoms started opening. Then, yesterday, they were almost all out. Because we saw this house for the first time in late June (2020), and bought it in Aug (with a November contract signing) I had no idea about the flowering trees. But they are amazing. There are several old Kwanzans, and they all bloom together in one giant pin...