Don’t get me wrong: I love working remotely, and I vastly prefer it to commuting to an office. I love that I have the time in the morning to knock out a run, make myself a real breakfast, and settle into my workday without starting it in traffic. I enjoy the distraction-free privacy I get from staying at home instead of sitting in an open-concept office surrounded by nosy and noisy coworkers. And I especially relish having total control over the thermostat.
Unfortunately, as the editorial calendar has gotten busy, I’ve noticed that I’ve fallen into a rut. It’s incredibly easy for me to stay home all day and have no social contact with anyone but my cat (whom I admittedly love to death). It makes it hard to perceive time sometimes, which can ultimately lead to days that bleed into each other. Pair that with my home’s increased association with my work and you have a mental health disaster in the making. I’m eager to change my habits when the new year rolls around.
Forming a routine out of working in other places can get frustrating as you juggle meetings and traveling to distant locations, but I know I have a better day when I talk to someone in the flesh during it. Even if all I have to say is “Could I have an Americano, please?”
As such, I’ll be taking some steps to get out more often. Below are three things I’m going to try doing at least once a week so I can work with a body double just a little more often.
1. Work at a cafe
Working around others at a coffee shop isn’t some newfangled practice invented by Starbucks in the early aughts; it’s been a part of our culture and others for hundreds of years. It’s a great place to mooch an internet connection, drink a slightly better cup of coffee, listen to some good music, and be around the buzz of other people. I enjoy them especially for the abundance of people doing things other than working, such as solving a crossword or going on an awkward first date. When I have an easy day at work, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
I will admit, though, that I can’t go to a cafe all the time. There's just too much going on sometimes for me to be productive, especially if I'm situated near the front counter and their coffee grinder. The best noise-cancelling headphones are an apt remedy on occasion, but I've found that I simply prefer to seek a quieter environment when I can.
2. Work at a coworking space
Cafes are fantastic places to meet fellow remote workers, but they can also be a bit noisy and cramped. And unless you have one of the best laptops for long battery life, you might find yourself at war with your fellow patrons over the last available outlet for your charger.
For a space that’s a bit more optimized for busy days but still rife with the company of strangers, you can try a coworking space, which is effectively a subscription-based office space full of desks, conference rooms, and other remote workers. Unlike the buzz of a cafe, everyone is guaranteed to be here to work. Hell, they’re literally paying for it. My plan is to do the same.
That’s the one snag, though: it’s not always cheap to become a member of a lot of these. The one that’s just a few blocks away from me charges 100 bucks a month for just 10 days of entry. Admittedly, that’s only a little pricier than the 10 coffees I’d buy at a cafe, but at least I’m getting something to drink with that.
Nevertheless, this is an ideal setup if you need to hunker down and work hard but don’t want to do it alone. At a coworking space, nobody’s going to bother you about loitering or have a loud conversation about their messy breakup two tables over.
3. Work with my fellow remote friends
If being around strangers isn’t your idea of a good time, you can always find friends who work remotely and spend the day with them. I have several friends who work from the same house, and they’ve been bugging me about spending the workday with them for as long as I’ve lived in the same city as them. Their setups are a little less mobile than mine (they use several of the best monitors while I chip away at my stories on a laptop), so it makes a lot more sense for me to visit them than vice versa.
The only con here is that they’re your friends. As much as it can be a loving act to force each other to stay on task, there’s no question that my friends are my friends because we have great banter. I made this mistake in college when I was writing my thesis: I made a study group with my three best friends, and we didn’t get a lick of work done the entire time we were at the cafe together. Months later, I did the bulk of the work for my first draft in the span of two cortisol-flooded weeks. I would not recommend it.
Working away from home: not efficient but life-saving
At the end of the day, I don’t think I’m a more efficient worker when I work around other people, especially people I know. But I’m unquestionably more efficient when I’m happy, and it brings me joy to surround myself with the warmth and life of others. Nobody should need to be a secluded robot for their job — the beauty of remote work lies in its versatility, and work-from-homers need to get creative sometimes to supplement their human contact.
Cafes, coworking spaces, and friends all have their ups and downs, which is why I like that I’m making a goal to diversify these sources of company in the new year. Because I get different work done better in different settings, I can plan out my week and figure out ahead of time which spaces make the most sense to visit on a given day. Got a big deadline coming up? I’ll be at the coworking space. A slow day with a small heap of tedious work? I’ll be at my friend’s. With hope, this system will breathe a little more life into my day-to-day goings on.
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