Introducing… a Week in the Life (for Corporette)!

A few weeks ago, readers noted that they really loved our Week in the Life series over at CorporetteMoms, but wished we had one over here at Corporette that asked work-life balance questions of businesswomen regardless of whether they were moms. So… we've put one together, and we are thrilled to introduce it today! You can click here to submit an entry, or click here to see a PDF of the questions. 

A few notes on the questions:

As always, submissions with email addresses are vastly preferred so we can ask follow-up questions and give you previews of the post ahead of time, but you could also give us your phone number if you'd prefer to talk to someone on the phone. You will not be added to any sort of email list when you give us your emails, and we will hold all information pursuant to our privacy policy.

A note to working moms: you're welcome to submit either to CorporetteMoms or Corporette. That said, though, if a lot of your week involves childcare or parenting issues, you may want to submit over at CorporetteMoms instead.

30-Foot View. There are two changes from the way our CorporetteMoms form has been set up in the past (and we may bring the changes over there as well) — the first is that we're asking for a 30-foot view of the past 3-6 months. When I was in BigLaw my life was kind of monotonous, with the weekdays all basically being some combo of “exercise and go to work” with dating sprinkled in, and the weekends all being some combo of “exercise, shop, friends/dates, eat/drink, Netflix” — but that time period of my life felt totally insane because there were stretches of intense weeks and months for reasons like long work hours, work travel,”friend milestone” events, family drama like grandparents dying, and more. I'd love your thoughts on this — would you hesitate to fill a “Week in My Life” form out because your first reaction would be that your life is too monotonous/the same, or that each week varies so greatly based on work demands that there is no single representative “week” for you? As readers, are you more interested in the 30-foot view or the day to day view? Do you think there's a better way to understand someone's work-life balance rather than ask them what they did last week? 

Pick one: The second big change from CorporetteMoms is that, in addition to the “tell us about your week” questions, we're adding in a slightly odd thing, which is “pick ONE question about your lifestyle to answer more in depth and tell us about it.” So far these are the questions — we may add more or change the existing ones as options as the process goes on. Whoever submits a form will pick ONE of these ten questions to answer. (I'd love to have everyone answer all ten, but I understand time is limited!) 

1. What does work-life balance mean to you?
2. Share some of your big wins with us, whether personal or professional — the more recent the better!
3. Exercise – what kind of exercise do you do in your life? How big of a priority is it to you, and why?
4. Eating plans / diet / food – Are you following an eating plan or specific diet? Do you have thoughts on it or tips on how you make it work in your lifestyle?
5. Describe 1) your typical outfit for work and 2) a work outfit that you really loved.
6. If you won the lottery tomorrow, how would your life change? Shopping/travel/new career?
7. What's in your bag (purse or tote) right now?
8. What's one thing that surprised you about your industry, career, or job?
9. Life lessons: What's a major life lesson or two that you would share with other Corporette readers, whether you've learned them the hard way or used them as guiding principles?
10. Please recommend 3 great ____ (books, movies, podcasts, or anything else you're passionate about) and tell us in a quick sentence why each is so awesome.

 Again, taking myself as an example, I would have had passionate answers to 3, 4, 5, 9, and 10 — but probably not to some of the other ones.

You can click here to submit an entry!

You can click here to submit an entry!

You can click here to submit an entry!

Readers, what are your thoughts — what additional questions would you want to ask a businesswoman about her work-life balance? What about your own life would this form not capture that you think other people would be interested in?